Fern Isabel Coppedge

Place: Cerro Gordo

Born: 1883

Death: 1951

Biography:

Fern Isabel Coppedge, an American impressionist painter, was born on July 28, 1883, in Cerro Gordo near Decatur, Illinois. She spent much of her life in Pennsylvania where she became associated with the New Hope School of American Impressionism and the Pennsylvania Impressionism movement.

Early Life and Education

Fern attended the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Students League of New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. During her artistic career, she received several awards including the Shillard Medal in Philadelphia, a Gold Medal from the Exposition of Women’s Achievements, another Gold Medal from the Plastics Club of Philadelphia, and the Kansas City H.O. Dean Prize for Landscape.

Awards and Memberships

She was a member of several prominent art organizations including the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Art Students League of New York, and the Philadelphia Ten. Coppedge became well known for her work as a landscape impressionist, painting snow scenes of the villages and farms of Bucks County.

Notable Works and Exhibitions

The Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, displayed 50 of the artist's paintings in a retrospective exhibition in 1990 titled "Fern Coppedge: A Forgotten Woman" and published a 48-page catalog. In 2020–2021, the museum held another solo exhibition of her work, featuring new acquisitions and celebrating the digitization of her scrapbooks. Some notable works by Fern Isabel Coppedge include:

• October, a landscape painting sold at auction for $29,800 in 2011
• A Coppedge painting sold at auction for $308,000 in 2006

Legacy and References

Fern Isabel Coppedge died in New Hope, Pennsylvania, on April 21, 1951, at the age of 67. Her husband, Robert W. Coppedge, a science teacher and botanist, was born in Missouri in 1878 and died in New Hope, Pennsylvania in 1948. For more information about Fern Isabel Coppedge's life and work, visit Fern Isabel Coppedge on Wikioo.org or her page on Wikipedia. You can also explore the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Art Alliance on Wikioo.org for more information about American impressionism.