Bessie Lowenhaupt, American (1881-1968)

Bessie Cronbach Lowenhaupt (1881-1968) was born in Mount Vernon, Indiana on November 19, 1881. With little beyond her own self training while growing up, Bessie Cronbach studied art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1889 through the spring of 1903. One of her instructors was the illustrator Frederick Richardson. From Richardson she learned memory drawing (the creation of a composition with out the use of a model), and spareness of line and composition. These lessons would stay with Lowenhaupt through her life.
 
After school she returned home to southern Indiana and eventually married the lawyer Abe Lowenhaupt, and they settled in St. Louis, MO. They raised five children and Bessie Lowenhaupt relegated her painting to her third floor studio. Not until the mid 1950s did Lowenhaupt again take up painting seriously. She began again in her 70s to study painting 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."
 
Her imagery was mostly borrowed from her daily life and experiences. For example, she loved to portray local nuns walking through the neighborhood with their long habits swinging and swaying. While she painted numerous still lives, each seeks to relay the essence of the objects she portrayed. Her attention was captured by people in neighborhood parks or by mundane things like garbage cans in an alley with their lids askew. Whatever the subject, each work continued to explore her interest in creating art and communicating experience.
 
Bessie C. Lowenhaupt died at home on October 31, 1968.

Submitted by Joyce Schiller
 
Bibliography
Joyce K. Schiller, The Art of Bessie Lowenhaupt: St. Louis Painter (St. Louis, MO: The Saint Louis Art Museum, 1995)