Katharine Carl

Katharine Augusta Carl (sometimes spelled Katherine Carl) was an American portrait painter and author. She made paintings of notable and royal people in the United States, Europe and Asia. She spent nine months in China in 1903 painting a portrait of the Empress Dowager Cixi for the St. Louis Exposition. On her return to America, she published a book about her experience, titled With the Empress Dowager of China.

Katharine Augusta Carl was born in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 12, 1865, the daughter of Francis Augustus Carl, Ph.D., LL.D. and Mary Breadon Carl. She had a brother named Francis A. Carl.

Carl graduated with a Master of Arts from the Tennessee State Female College in 1882. She studied art under Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois and William-Adolphe Bouguereau in Paris, and then exhibited her works in the Paris salons.

She lived in New York City at 51 Washington Square and had a studio in the city.

In her later years she lived on East Seventy Eight Street in New York City. Carl died December 7, 1938 of burns at Lenox Hill Hospital she received when taking a bath at her apartment.