Russell Cheney

Youth

Cheney's parents were Knight Dexter Cheney and Ednah Dow Smith Cheney of South Manchester, Connecticut. His extended family were leading American silk producers. The Cheney Brothers Historic District established landmark status in South Manchester for the Cheney family silk mills, workers' houses, civic buildings and Cheney mansions. He graduated from Yale University in 1904, where he was a member of the Skull and Bones secret society.

Career

Cheney studied painting at the Art Students League of New York and was its acting president in 1909-10. He held his first New York exhibition in Babcock Galleries 1922. His portrait of Professor Candle hung in the Paris Salon in 1909 and his work has been represented in many museums including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Art. Cheney illustrated F. O. Matthiessen's book Sarah Orne Jewett (1929), on the writer of the same name. A catalogue of Cheney's paintings was published in 1922. Cheney was a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and San Francisco Art Society.

Later life

He was the longtime partner and lover of author F. O. Matthiessen, who was also a Yale graduate and became a member of Skull & Bones in 1923. Matthiessen was twenty years Russell's junior. Russell's death was due to mesenteric thrombosis. He was buried in East Cemetery in Manchester, Connecticut. He was survived by Matthiessen, two sisters, Ednah Cheney Underhill of Santa Barbara, California and Mrs. Halstead Dorey of Boerne, Texas. He had three brothers Knight Dexter Cheney, Philip Cheney, and Thomas Langdon Cheney, who were also members of Skull and Bones.