Ellen Emmet Rand (née Ellen Gertrude Emmet; March 4, 1875 – December 18, 1941) was a painter and illustrator. She specialized in portraits, painting over 500 works during her career including portraits of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and her cousins Henry James and William James. Rand studied at the Cowles Art School in Boston and the Art Students League in New York City and produced illustrations for Vogue Magazine and Harper's Weekly before traveling to England and then France to study with sculptor Frederick William MacMonnies. The William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut owns the largest collection of her painted works and the University of Connecticut, as well as the Archives of American Art within the Smithsonian Institution both have collections of her papers, photographs, and drawings.
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Early life and family
Ellen Gertrude Emmet was the third of six children born to Ellen James Temple Emmet and Christopher Temple Emmet. She was called "Bay". Ellen was born in San Francisco but moved to New York after her father's death in 1884. Her cousins were painters Lydia Field Emmet (1866–1952), Rosina Emmet Sherwood (1854–1948), and Jane Emmet de Glehn (1873–1961) and the writers Henry James (1843–1916) and William James (1842–1910). She married William Blanchard Rand in 1911 and had three sons. Rand's primary studio was in New York City but she would also work in Salisbury, Connecticut where her family lived.