Cracker House - Emmaline Buchholz
Oil
c. 1925
On Loan from The Matheson Museum
Emmaline Buchholz
1888 - 1973
Emmaline Hardy was born near Greenville, North Carolina. As a child she wanted to be an artist and later remembered how thrilled she was just to hold a paintbrush. Educated at Randolph-Macon Woman's College, she won a scholarship to the Pennslyvania Academy of Fine Arts. In Philadelphia she studied portrait painting with Hugh beckenridge and life study with Thomas P. Anshutz. Emmaline taught art at the Woman's College of South Carolina and was supervisor of art in the Shreveport, Louisiana, public schools before moving to Chicago and the Art Institute for further study. There she met Frederick, "Fritz" Buccholz. They married, moved to Tampa and, shortly before World War I, to Gainesville.
Fritz Buccholz was a Floridian, born in Tampa in 1885. He attended Florida State College in Tallahassee, where he was a fullback on the 1902 football team. Florida's first Rhodes Scholar, Buccholz came to Gainesville in 1914 to teach and coach football at Gainesville High School. He would direct the public schools in Alachua County for thirty years and publish his History of Alachua County. Emmaline devoted herself to her family, the community, and art. - The Artists of Old Florida by Alfred R. Frankel
After starting the Gainesville Association of Fine Arts in 1923, Emmaline went on to found the Florida Federation of Art in 1927 which connected art clubs from different cities in the state. She was elected as its first president, and it operated for 50 years until 1977.