Minerva Josephine Chapman (1858–1947) was an American painter. She was known for her work in miniature portraiture, landscape, and still life. Early life Minerva Josephine Chapman was born December 6, 1858 in Sand Bank, now called Altmar, New York. Her parents were Josephine and James L. Chapman. Nicknamed Minnie, she grew up on Vernon Avenue in Chicago, Illinois. She had younger brothers Wilbert, Irving and James and a younger sister, Blanche. Education Chapman was financially able to live an independent life and pursue college and art education due to her father's success as a banker and tannery owner. At the same time, women were allowed entry into prestigious art academies in the United States and in France. She studied at the Mount Holyoke College where she was in the junior class in 1867 and in the graduating class of 1878 In 1875 she attended the University of Chicago. Between 1880 and 1886 she studied privately with Annie C. Shaw and then with John Vanderpoel at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. During that time she also traveled and was educated in the eastern United States. Chapman went to Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and Paris in 1886 and studied with Georg Jocobedis in Munich, Germany. She and her sister Blanche moved to Paris and Chapman attended Académie Julian before deciding to take private lessons from Charles Augustus Lasar, who encouraged Impressionist painting of still lifes and plein air landscapes. While in Paris, Chapman also studied between 1887 and 1897 with Raphaël Collin, Gustave-Claude-Etienne Courtois, Tony Robert-Fleury, and William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Career Chapman made portraits, miniatures on ivory and canvas, landscapes and genre paintings. She resided for much of her career in Paris with interspersed travel to Chicago, such as in 1893 when she exhibited The Village Church at the Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Illinois. Three of her oil paintings were shown at a Chicago Institute of Art exhibition in 1898. Two were portraits of women and the other was an interior painting of a studio. She was elected as a member of the Salon of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1906. In January 1908 she exhibited 34 miniatures at the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition of 1907 to 1908. She was a member beginning in 1909 and was the first women president in 1914 of the International Art Union. At the beginning of World