Artist, collector, and philanthropist, Ella Augusta “Eleanor” Norcross’s bequest of paintings and funds established what would become the Fitchburg Art Museum. She is recognized as its founder.

Born into a comfortable family in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Norcross (1854-19123) was well educated from earliest childhood. She attended Wheaton Female Seminary (now Wheaton College) and Boston’s Massachusetts Normal Art School (now the Massachusetts College of Art and Design). She taught art in Fitchburg briefly before moving to New York City to study with William Merritt Chase. In 1883, she moved to Paris, France to study with Alfred Stevens, living there for 40 years. During the summer months she returned to Fitchburg.

Norcross exhibited her paintings at the Champ de Mars’ Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts as well as in Boston, Chicago, and New York. She did not sell any of her work as her father believed that women should not enter into the male-oriented business world of fine art.

To provide exposure to people that did not have the opportunity to experience fine art directly, Norcross became a collector, purchasing furniture, textiles, porcelain, and paintings with the goal of establishing a cultural center in Fitchburg. To that end, in 1923, Norcross provided $10,000 in her will requiring that the city raise an equal amount as an endowment for the new center.

Six years later, the Fitchburg Art Center, which later became the Fitchburg Art Museum, opened, “for the joy and inspiration of art,” fulfilling her dream. Norcross’s works were shown posthumously in Paris at the Louvre and Salon d’Automne and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.