 Holden
was born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1895. Her parents were Cora Millet Babb
and Daniel Walker Holden. Holdenıs father died the year she was born and
the two Coras (mother and daughter) returned to Maine as the childıs maternal
grandparents were living there in the late nineteenth century. As a young
adult Cora entered the Massachusetts Normal School of Art where she studied
painting with Joseph DeCamp, sculpture with Cyrus Dallin, and decorative
figure composition with Richard Andrew. By 1918 the twenty-two year old
was in Cleveland at the Cleveland School of Art where she studied "various
phases of newspaper art, decorative illustration and design, and, under
Mr. Matzen, sculpture, in which she has shown remarkable ability."She
also studied figure composition with Henry G. Keller and anatomy and figure
drawing with Frank N. Wilcox. Because she was competent in portrait painting,
book illustration, sculpting, poster decorating, and mural painting, Georgie
Norton, the director of the Cleveland School of Art considered Holden something
of a "phenomenon." But Holden, the daughter and granddaughter
of pioneering female physicians, was reared to believe there was nothing
unusual about a woman working in a manıs world. According to Edith L. Sommer,
who wrote about art matters in Cleveland Topics, "Miss Holdenıs family
scorns the idea of her being a phenomenon, and looks upon her as a normal,
extremely wholesome girl, of whom extraordinary talent is expected as a
matter of course by virtue of the ability of her ancestors." |
