Pioneer Information
Born in New York into the prominent Clarkson family, Livingston spent much of her childhood on the family’s Holcroft estate in the Upper Hudson Valley. Here she developed an interest in landscape gardening, eventually designing and planting her own garden. In 1906 she married John Henry Livingston (1848–1927), and after a two-year honeymoon to Egypt, the couple moved to Clermont, the Livingston family’s mid-eighteenth-century estate in Tivoli, New York, on the Hudson River. She subsequently began to create several gardens on the grounds at Clermont, over the course of many decades developing the Children’s Garden, Cutting Garden, Walled Garden, Wilderness Garden, and the South Spring Garden, the latter of which she especially enjoyed viewing from the home’s library.
In the 1920s Livingston collaborated with her husband and architect Mott B. Schmidt to develop ideas for renovations of the Clermont mansion. She was a photographer, extensively documenting the family and her gardens. She was also a self-taught sculptor. Inspired by her exposure to Egyptian art, in 1925 Livingston began experimenting with sculpture. Three years later, she exhibited such pieces as The Scarp, at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Reviewed in the Revue du Vrai et du Beau, these works were lauded, despite her lack of formal training. In the 1930s her sculpture was shown in several Paris salons as well as Argent Galleries, New York (1936).
In 1942 she moved into the Clermont Cottage, modest quarters on the Clermont estate, and continued to maintain the estate’s gardens for the rest of her life. In 1962 she deeded Clermont to the State of New York but lived on the property until her death two years later. Livingston died at the age of 92 and is buried in Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church Cemetery in Tivoli, New York.
