Bench by the Lake

Before a pond where white ducks swim, two figures sit hunched on a park bench. In this landscape Bessie Lowenhaupt used a minimum of lines to divide the park area and the pond. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Lowenhaupt later moved to St. Louis in 1910. While taking painting classes at Washington University in the 1930s and 1950s, she developed the foundation of her artistic practice: a focus on everyday subjects and forms that verge on the abstract. It was not until the death of her husband in 1958 that Lowenhaupt began to exhibit her work.