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1900
January 28: Alice Hartley Neel is born in
Merion Square, Pennsylvania, to Alice Concross Hartley, a
descendant of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and
George Washington Neel, an accountant in the per diem
department of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Her father’s
family is variously described as owners of a steamship company
and as a family of opera singers.
Neel is the fourth of five children
(Hartley, Albert, Lillian, Alice, and George Washington, Jr.),
the eldest of whom will die of diphtheria at age eight. In
mid-1900 when Neel is about three months old, her family moves
to Colwyn, Pennsylvania, a small town outside Philadelphia in
Darby Township. The U.S. Census of 1900 records their address
as 106 Third Street; two years later they are listed as
residing at 110 South Third Street.
1914-18
Neel attends Darby High School, at which
time the family is listed at 408 Colwyn Avenue, Colwyn,
Pennsylvania.
1918
June 28: Graduates from Darby High School,
afterwards taking a business course including typing and
stenography. Upon completing the course, she takes the civil
service exam.
1918-21
Holds a secretarial job with the Army Air
Corps, working for Lieutenant Theodore Sizer, who will later
become an art historian at Yale University. She takes evening
art classes at the School of Industrial Art, a division of the
Pennsylvania (later Philadelphia) Museum of Art.
After leaving her job with the air force,
turns down a secretarial position at Swarthmore College.
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Alice Neel’s parents c.1907
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Alice Neel, 1905, age 5
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Neel c.1917
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