Eliza Way Riley

Not surprisingly, Eliza Way Champlain (Betsey's daughter and Mary's niece) benefited from an early introduction to art. As a teenager, she painted watch papers and copied engravings, graduating to ivory miniatures and teaching by the time she reached her twenties. She learned painting from her mother and especially her aunt, whose tireless criticism continued unabated long after the older woman had gone blind. Mary Way worked especially hard to position Eliza for a career as a painter. Over the course of several extended visits to New York City between 1815 and 1820, Eliza studied painting with her aunt, met many of Way's artist-friends, and attended Academy exhibitions and art auctions to view examples of fine art. In the 1820s, she made a series of half-hearted attempts to support herself in New York City by giving art lessons to young ladies and painting portraits, allegorical "fancy-pieces," and watch papers. But she found that she lacked the survival skills necessary to compete in an art market saturated with European émigrés and other women painter-cum-teachers. After her marriage in 1826 she painted sporadically before the demands of childcare and her own indifferent health induced her to "abandon [it] entirely."

from: http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n97106490/