A Passion for the Arts in St. Louis

(September 7, 1938 – December 11, 2016) Carol Westfall, an artist known internationally and a retired Professor of textiles in the Art Department at Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey, died December 11, 2016. She was 78. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (BA) and the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) (MFA), Westfall was also an…

(September 6, 1805 – December 18, 1852) Horatio Greenough was the first American to make sculpture his profession and to gain international recognition thereby. He was born in Boston and began his career copying casts of classical sculptures at the Boston Athenaeum. His friendship with Washington Allston, begun while at Harvard, influenced his career and…

(5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840) Caspar David Friedrich was a German Romantic landscape painter, generally considered the most important German artist of his generation. He is best known for his allegorical landscapes, which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work…

(4 September 1888 – 13 April 1943) Oskar Schlemmer, German painter, sculptor, choreographer, and designer known for his abstract yet precise paintings of the human form as well as for his avant-garde ballet productions. Schlemmer was exposed to design theory at a young age as an apprentice in a marquetry workshop. He took classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Arts)…

(September 3, 1920 – February 13, 1996) Edmond Casarella was an American printmaker, painter, and sculptor based in the New York metropolitan area. He developed the innovative use of a layered cardboard printing matrix that could be carved like a woodcut, enabling the inexpensive creation of large-scale works. Casarella was born in Newark, New Jersey, on September 3, 1920, to an…

(September 2, 1917 – April 9, 1983) William Dole was born in 1917 in Angola, Indiana to his postmaster father, W. Earl Dole and his mother, Edna Cowen Dole. Throughout his adolescence, Dole was enthralled by the reproductions of artworks embedded in the pages of women’s magazines such as the Ladies’ Home Journal and Vanity Fair. From highschool…

(September 1, 1889 – May 14, 1953) After immigrating to the United States in 1906, Kuniyoshi lived briefly in Seattle, then moved to Los Angeles and subsequently to New York where he studied at the Robert Henri School, the Independent School, and at the Art Students League. Hamilton Easter Field, patron and friend of Robert…

(August 31, 1951 – June 25, 2007) Douglas Bourgeois graduated from Louisiana State University in 1974 with a B.F.A. He worked in New Orleans for several years until he returned to live in St. Amant. He has received awards for his work throughout his career including a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship in 1992;…

(30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825) Jacques-Louis David was a French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s, his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward classical austerity and severity and heightened feeling, harmonizing with the moral climate of the final years of…

(29 August 1780 – 14 January 1867) Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a French Neoclassical painter. Ingres was profoundly influenced by past artistic traditions and aspired to become the guardian of academic orthodoxy against the ascendant Romantic style. Although he considered himself a painter of history in the tradition of Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David, it is his portraits, both painted and drawn, that are recognized as his greatest…