A Passion for the Arts in St. Louis

(September 27, 1946 – May 8, 1978) T.C. Cannon was an influential Native American artist, born in Lawton, Oklahoma to Walter Cannon and Minnie Ahdunko Cannon. Born as Tommy Wayne Cannon, he was an enrolled member of the Kiowa Tribe with his father of the Kiowa and mother of the Caddo. Cannon is best known…

(September 26, 1791 – January 26, 1824) Théodore Géricault, painter who exerted a seminal influence on the development of Romantic art in France. Géricault was a dandy and an avid horseman whose dramatic paintings reflect his flamboyant and passionate personality. As a student, Géricault learned the traditions of English sporting art from the French painter Carle Vernet, and he developed a remarkable facility for capturing…

(September 25, 1903 – February 25, 1970) Mark Rothko was a major Abstract Expressionist artist and had an important influence on the development of colour field painting. Latvian by birth, Rothko emigrated with his mother and sister to the United States in 1913, joining his father and two brothers who had come a few years before. Growing up…

(born September 24, 1937) Barbara Neijna is a Miami-based artist who works in a variety of media from sculpture, public art, and photography. Her photographs largely depict the destruction of the natural environment as a result of chemical or industrial sources. She received her BFA in 1959 from Syracuse University and studied at the Accademia…

(September 23, 1899 – April 17, 1988) Louise Nevelson was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Kyiv Oblast, Ukraine), she emigrated with her family to the United States in the early 20th century. Nevelson learned English at school, as she spoke Yiddish at home. By the…

(September 22, 1891 – February 24, 1978) Born on September 22, 1891, in Columbus, Georgia, Alma Woodsey Thomas grew up in a family that encouraged education and appreciation of literature and the arts. In 1907, the family moved to Washington D.C., partly due to the Atlanta race riots, but also because Washington had better education…

(September 21, 1879 – February 25, 1962) George Demont Otis was born in Memphis, Tennessee, on 21 September 1879. He was orphaned at the age of six, and was sent to live with an aunt in Sedalia, Missouri. When he twelve, he was placed with a family in Chicago. He began his artistic education at the age…

(September 20, 1915 – February 23, 1999) Hughie Lee-Smith (September 20, 1915 – February 23, 1999) was an American artist and teacher whose surreal paintings often featured distant figures under vast skies, and desolate urban settings. Lee-Smith was born in Eustis, Florida to Luther and Alice Williams Smith; in art school he altered his last name to sound…

(September 19, 1880 – July 1, 1973) Clarence Kerr Chatterton, the creator of Vassar’s Applied Art (studio art) program, was born in Newburgh, NY, on September 19, 1880, to Charles L. Chatterton, a lawyer born of English parents, and Julia Lendrum Chatterton, the daughter of a mayor of Newburgh. Although they allowed him to study…

(September 18, 1814 – October 11, 1884) Henry Tiebout Anthony was an American photographer and the vice president of the E. & H. T. Anthony & Company, which was the largest manufacturer and distributor of photographic supplies in the United States during the 19th century. Henry Anthony was a brother of Edward Anthony and had a close business relationship…