Description:

Bessie Lowenhaupt
American, 1881-1968

Oil on canvas
Unsigned. Cityscape in gray with pigeon on a fence in foreground, likely painted from the artist's balcony, unframed.

A 1962 painting with very similar composition, entitled 'Rooftops (Roofs)' and signed by the artist, was included in the St. Louis Art Museum's 1995-1996 exhibition of Lowenhaupt's work (Joyce K. Schiller, 'The Art of Bessie Lowenhaupt, St. Louis Painter', p. 75.). It was around this time, early 1962, when Lowenhaupt began signing her paintings at the insistence of others. She apparently found it presumptuous to do so.

  • Provenance: Acquired from the artist by Tirzah Perfect Dunn
    From the collection of Quinta Scott, St. Louis, Missouri

    Bessie Cronbach Lowenhaupt was born in Mount Vernon, Indiana on November 19, 1881. She studied art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1889 through the spring of 1903 where she studied under the illustrator Frederick Richardson.
     
    After school Lowenhaupt eventually married and settled in St. Louis, MO, where she raised five children while continuing to paint in her third floor studio. It was in the mid 1950s, in her 70s, when Lowenhaupt took up painting seriously again studying under Gustav Goetsch and Fred Conway at Washington University's School of Art in St. Louis. After her husband's death in 1958, Lowenhaupt began to have her work exhibited. George McCue, an art critic for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reviewed her work. He was intrigued by the "sophisticatedly naive character of the paintings."
     
    Lowenhaupt's work was often a depiction borrowed from her daily life and experiences. While she painted numerous still lives, each seeks to relay the essence of the objects she portrayed.
    Bessie C. Lowenhaupt died at home on October 31, 1968.
  • Dimensions: 24 x 18 in. (61 x 45.7 cm.)
  • Medium: Oil on canvas
  • Condition: In good and stable overall condition. Stable craquelure. Mild vertical drip stains to center.

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November 9, 2024 10:00 AM CST
St. Louis, MO, US

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