Kate Freeman Clark was the daughter of Edward Clark, an attorney in Vicksburg, Mississippi and Cary Freeman Clark, a descendant of the politically prominent Walthall family of Holly Springs.
Shortly after her father's death in 1885, she enrolled in the Gardiner Institute, a finishing school for girls. Exploring the art section of the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago played a role in Kate's decision to pursue a career as an artist. She enrolled in the Arts Students League in New York where she studied under John H. Twachtman, Irving Wiles and William Merritt Chase.
In 1896, for the first of six consecutive summers, Kate Freeman Clark attended Chase's outdoor painting classes at Shinnecock Hills, Long Island. Her works exhibited a little of Chase's influence but she soon developed her own style. At the turn of the century, Clark began submitting her work to important exhibitions using the name "Freeman Clark" in order to hide her gender. For a period of over twenty years Clark had many works accepted into prestigious shows, including The Corcoran Gallery, The Carnegie Institute, The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, The National Academy of Design, and The New York School of Art. William Merritt Chase's death in 1916 and the changing mode of art, introduced by the New York Armory Show of Cubist paintings in 1913, took the heart out of her career.
After losing her grandmother in 1919 and her mother's passing in 1922, Kate Freeman Clark decided to give up painting and returned to the Walthall home in Mississippi. She chose not to bring back with her the more than one thousand paintings accumulated during her artistic career, and instead stored them in New York's Lincoln Warehouse. Even though she built a studio on the second floor of her house in Mississippi, she never painted again.
Having never married, Ms. Clark feared her family name would be forgotten and so she bequeathed to the city of Holly Springs, Mississippi, her family home, her entire collection of paintings and funds to build a museum, known today as The Kate Freeman Clark Gallery. The gallery features over 1,000 of her paintings. It is reputed to be the world's largest collection of paintings by a single artist.
