A Living Legacy.
The Tarbell Charitable Trust was founded to preserve and exhibit the works of
American Impressionist Edmund Charles Tarbell.
Edmund C. Tarbell is considered one of the most important American Impressionists and a defining artist of the Boston School. His paintings are represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and many of the nation’s leading museums.
One of the Trust’s greatest discoveries was the concept of fusing the art and legacy of Edmund Charles Tarbell with
the Tarbell story that had been waiting to be told.
The Tarbells: Celebrating Our Mohawk and American Story is the Tarbell Charitable Trust's largest initiative to date — a five-year project reuniting the Mohawk and American Tarbell family lines through newly commissioned art, and whose proceeds support the preservation of the Mohawk language for future generations.
The Trust - What it is and why it exists
The Tarbell Charitable Trust is a private 501(c)(3) foundation established to preserve and exhibit the works and artifacts of Edmund Charles Tarbell — co-founder of the Boston School of American Impressionism, born in West Groton, Massachusetts. Edmund Charles Tarbell was one of the most celebrated American painters of his era. His luminous family portraits and plein air scenes changed what American Impressionism looked like — and what it was willing to pay attention to. With form, function and light, telling intimate scenes and stories worth holding still long enough to paint. The Trust was founded by Daniel Wesley Badger Tarbell — visionary, generous sharer with the public of his collection of Edmund Charles Tarbell paintings and artifacts, and creator of a mechanism for future donations of ECT works to the Trust. In November 2024, his daughter Elizabeth Souther Tarbell became Trustee. Her first acts: to illuminate the Tarbell Charitable Trust’s mission, highlight the relevance of artist Edmund Charles Tarbell in today’s world, and bring the full Tarbell story into the light. The 2030 exhibition is the Trust's primary next initiative. It will not be its last. All future trustees will be aligned with the TCT mission — ensuring the Trust's work continues long after any single exhibition closes.
“The mission of the Trust is to exhibit to the public the works of Edmund Charles Tarbell. What makes an artist relevant? The people who carry his legacy.”
How the Trust Works - With and For Community
The Tarbell Charitable Trust does not arrive in a community and install an exhibition. It arrives and asks: who is already here? What do you already carry? How do we build something together that is bigger than any of us alone? In Groton, Massachusetts — the town where the Tarbell story begins and where artist Edmund Charles Tarbell was born — the Trust found a community that had been quietly carrying the Tarbell Mohawk story for decades. A library that has passed this story from librarian to librarian at the reference desk. A history center founded the same year ECT was painting his greatest works. A community center that has made arts and culture accessible to eleven surrounding towns with a responsible budget and extraordinary community will. The Trust's role is to weave those threads together. To provide the resources, the vision, and the brand story that allows each partner to contribute what only they can offer. The library holds the memory. The history center holds the record. The Prescott Community Center holds the space and the audience. The Trust holds the paintings and artifacts — and the responsibility to tell the whole story. That is what collaboration looks like in practice. Not a lead organization with satellites. Five equal partners building something none of them could build alone.
“This is not just art on display. This is an understanding of our region. It is an understanding of our history. It is an understanding of how this area was settled and who lived here before us”
Lili did not grow up with museums. She and her brothers grew up inside the paintings. Her great-grandfather Edmund Charles Tarbell traveled with his family every summer from Boston to a compound on the Piscataqua River in Newcastle, New Hampshire. He painted there. The work he produced in that studio — luminous, intimate, true to the people he loved — became the foundation of the Boston School of American Impressionism. Lili grew up in that studio. Her grandmother in the stable. Her great aunt in the Great House. The river where one of Edmund Charles Tarbell's most celebrated paintings was made was the river she grew up beside. She did not inherit an institution. She inherited a lived-in place — and a story that had been waiting for the right person to ask the right question. When she became Trustee in November 2024, she asked it. What if we told the whole story? She reached out to Harold Tarbell — former Chief of the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne, current cultural leader, and direct descendant of the brothers who stayed, and Darren Bonaparte, tribal historian and son of former chief Rosemary Bonaparte Tarbell. She assembled the Tarbellites. She brought the exhibition to Groton — the town where the story began — and to the partners who had been waiting, some of them for decades, for exactly this moment. Lili's guiding principle: this is not about any one person. It is about the families, the living culture, the language, and the story that has been waiting more than three centuries to be fully told.
Elizabeth Souther Tarbell - The Trustee’s Origin Story
Lili did not grow up with museums. She grew up inside the paintings.
Her great-grandfather Edmund Charles Tarbell painted every summer at a compound on the Piscataqua River in New Hampshire. Lili grew up in that studio. She did not inherit an institution. She inherited a lived-in place — and a story that had been waiting for the right person to ask the right question.
When she became Trustee in November 2024, she asked it.
“It is about the families, the living culture, the language, and the story that has been waiting more than three centuries to be fully told.”
“What if we told the whole story?”