Fern Coppedge

Fern Isabel Coppedge (Jul 28, 1883 - Apr 21, 1951) was an American impressionist painter. She became well known for her work as a landscape impressionist who painted scenes that were blanketed with snow, she spent much of her life in Pennsylvania where she was associated with the New Hope School of American Impressionism, the Fellowship of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Philadelphia Art Alliance, and what became known as the Pennsylvania Impressionism movement.

Fern Isabel Coppedge was born on July 28, 1888. She grew up on her family's farm near Decatur, Illinois; one of five sisters and a brother. When she was thirteen she moved to California with an older sister and had her first experiences with art. She visited art galleries for the first time and became interested in painting when her sister began studying watercolor. Upon her return to the midwest, Coppedge studied at McPherson College and then the University of Kansas.

From 1908-1910, Coppedge focused her interests in art by attending the Art Institute of Chicago. Following her married to Robert Coppedge and a teaching stint in Kansas, the couple moved east. She studied with Vincent DuMond and William Merritt Chase in New York at the Arts Student League, and then with John Carlson in Woodstock.

She 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. 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.

In 1917, Coppedge was accepted to the annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. It was at PAFA that Coppedge studied with Daniel Garber and Henry Snell.

She was a member of the Philadelphia Ten from 1922-1935. Coppedge was known to brave the elements in her bearskin coat and paint with frozen fingers- creating some of her most admired Bucks County winter scenes. Fern Coppedge died at her home in New Hope on April 12, 1951. Her paintings hang in many private collections and museums, including the James A. Michener Art Museum.

Memberships included the National Association of Women Artists, Philadelphia Artists Alliance, Plastic Club, Ten Philadelphia Painters, and the North Shore Artist Association.

Among her exhibition venues were the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Kansas City Art Institute, National Association of Women Artists, Moore College of Art and Design Retrospective and The Ten Philadelphia Painters, known as The Ten. This group, whose founding members had studied together in Philadelphia, began in 1917, a thirty year association of regular exhibitions. Most of the members, like Coppedge, led unconventional lives.

Fern Coppedge died in New Hope, Pennsylvania on April 21, 1951 at the age of 67.

Her style of Impressionism emphasized bright, contrasting colors, and today she, a highly prolific painter, is often compared to the Fauves and European post-impressionists.

Her art interests go back to her growing up when she was attending high school in Topeka, Kansas, and was encouraged by her teachers to pursue further art training. She enrolled at the University of Kansas, and in 1910, married Robert Coppedge, a biology professor at the University. However, after their marriage, "he mysteriously disappears from all discussion of the artist" (Folk, 105) and apparently no explanation for that omission has been found.

During her career, in addition to painting at New Hope, she spent many summers painting marine genre in Gloucester and Rockport, Massachusetts. In 1915, she was in Topeka, Kansas.

Works:
She became well known for her work as a landscape impressionist who painted scenes that were blanketed with snow, such as the villages and farms of Bucks County. Her works included Autumn Gold, Bucks County Scene, Lumberville, Lumberville Cottage, Old House, Spring on the Delaware, The Delaware Valley, and The Delaware Reflections.

Back Road to Pipersville:
Coppedgen recall how her vision of nature as a child was different from that of her peers: Around 1917 she moved to Philadelphia, where she studied with Daniel Garber at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and privately with Henry Bayley Snell. She soon joined a group of women artists, who would exhibit together as The Philadelphia Ten. In 1920 Fern Coppedge moved to Lumberville, Pennsylvania, while also maintaining her studio in Philadelphia until 1929 when she built a studio and home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. During the early 1920s, she created vibrant landscapes dominated by expressive color.

The Road to Lumberville (also known as The Edge of the Village):
In 1920, Fern Coppedge moved to Lumberville, Pennsylvania, where she created vibrant landscapes dominated by expressive color. In her paintings of the early 1920s, Coppedge worked directly from nature, recording the dynamic effects of light and atmosphere on the landscape.

The Delaware in Winter:
Coppedge, who studied with William Merritt Chase at New York’s Art Students League, spent much of her career recording the villages, waterways and countryside of Bucks County in a style that was uniquely hers. Her paintings—marked by their bold, sometimes arbitrary colors—were described by critics as possessing “virility…if one may use that word in commenting upon the work of a woman painter….” Indeed, the vivid hues she employed contrasted with the more muted, naturalistic palettes of her New Hope colleagues.

In 2011 a newly discovered landscape painting by Coppedge, entitled "October", was sold at auction for $29,800. In 2006 a Coppedge painting was auctioned for $308,000.
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