Annie Shepley Omori (1856 - 1943)

Annie Shepley Omori was an American artist, activist, and translator. For the first fifty years of her life, she produced work under her maiden name, Annie Barrows Shepley. She studied art in New York under Harry Siddons Mowbray and in Paris at Académie Julian under Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Lucien Simon. After that, she established studios in New York and Connecticut, where she worked as a portrait painter and children's book illustrator. She married Hyozo Omori, a Japanese exchange student, in 1907 and moved with him to Japan, where they established the Yurin En settlement house to provide educational and recreational opportunities to the poor in Tokyo. They were leaders in the Japanese playground movement. Hyozo Omori died in 1913, and Shepley continued running the center. She also translated Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan with Kochi Doi in 1920.