Ella Marie Koepke Mewhinney

HOLLAND - It's like finding buried treasure, only much more interesting to art collectors and Southwest art historians. Six heretofore unknown landscape paintings by Ella Koepke Mewhinney (1891-1975) of Bartlett have been uncovered in an estate going on the auction block here on Saturday. Mewhinney was an award-winning, respected 20th-century artist and considered by art historians one of Texas' foremost colorists.

She helped organize the Texas Artists Camp at Christoval and was a pioneer in championing women artists in an era when their creations were dismissed as "decorative and frivolous." "She's a widely recognized Texas significant artist. Her works demonstrate her mastery of color. They're so beautiful," said Stephanie Turnham, Bell County Museum director. "Her works glow with a special kind of luminescence." T

he Bell County Museum launched a broad retrospective last year with 50 works ranging from paintings on canvas and board to porcelain painting. When it was first announced the estate of prominent Holland businessman Leslie Doyle "L.D." Murphy (1860-1933) and his wife, Ella Octavia Long Murphy (1861-1952), was going on the block, one of Mewhinney's landscapes was found tucked away in a closet at the home. It drew inquiries and bank letters of guaranty from throughout the state. Auctioneer Bill Hall said he expects five more to create more intense interest in the auction.

Mewhinney's paintings continue to be exhibited throughout the Southwest including the Witte Memorial Museum in San Antonio, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, the All-Southern Exhibition in Nashville, the Texas State Exposition in Austin and countless other museums and galleries. She is well represented in private collections throughout the South.

Submitted by Ande Rasmussen whose source is an estate auction by Patricia Benoit, August 27, 2009

Ella Marie Koepke Mewhinney (Am. 1891-1962)

Ella Mewhinney was born in Nelsonville, Texas and reared in Bartlett, Texas. At age seventeen, she was a student of Mary A. Bishop at Texas Presbytarian College, Milford, from which Mewhinney received a baccalaureate in 1910.  She taught afterward in Bartlett and Granger.

In the summer of 1911 she studied flower and china painting under Kathryn E. Cherry and still-life and landscape painting under Frank L. Phoenix in St. Louis, subsidized by a scholarship.

Following her marriage in 1913, Mewhinney moved back to Texas and settled in Holland.  After study in Chicago, she spent six weeks in 1919 at the Art Students League of New York, where she was a student of George Brandt Bridgeman and sketched with Hans Peter Hansen. 

In 1922 she and Molly Crowther organized the Texas Artist Camp at Christoval; Mewhinney painted there (1922 - 1928) and served for a time as secretary. At a 1926 summer course in the Broadmoor Art Academy, Colorado Springs, she was a student of Randall Davey and Robert Reid; in the summer of 1929 she painted in the art colony at Old Lyme, Connecticut. 

Mewhinney worked mainly in oils but occasionally in pastels and watercolor.  A resident of Holland most of her life, she died in Dallas and was buried in Bartlett.

Source:
Texas Painters, Sculptors & Graphic Artists by John and Deborah Powers.

Courtesy to AskArt from Anne Kelly, Gallery Director, David Dike Fine Art.

Ella Mewhinney was born in Nelsonville, Texas, June 21, 1891. Her father, R.E. Koepke, was born in Germany and came to America at the age of eighteen. Her mother, Vlasta Massik, was of Austrian ancestry, her grandparents being early settlers from Austria, where the grandfather was a preacher and leader.

The Koepke family moved to Bartlett when Ella was nine years old and at this age she began the study of music. After completing her High School work, she completed her education at the Texas Presbyterian College, where she had her first training, under Miss Mollie Bishop at the age of seventeen.

About the same time she returned from college, the death of her father occurred, and she began to teach art classes in Bartlett and Granger, with pupils from Holland. The following summer she studied at the American Women's League in St. Louis, doing flower painting and china, under Kathryn Cherry, with lessons in still life under Frank L. Phoenix, one of the instructors at the summer school, and won the scholarship in the still life class.

Again in 1913, she studied china painting, going to Chicago with Mrs. Sam Crowther, whom she met while in St. Louis. Mrs. Mewhinney gave much credit to this friend, whom she credited with encouraging her, the most. In the summer of 1919, she spent six weeks in New York at the Art Student's league and studied under George Bridgeman and doing outdoor sketching with Hans Hansen. Then in 1925, she went to Colorado Springs and studied landscape painting under Randall Davey and portraiture under Robert Reid, N.A.

In 1913, Ella Koepke married Logan Mewhinney of Holland, Texas. She had two children, Logan U. and Marie. Her paintings were exhibited at the Southern States Art League, Witte Memorial Museum in San Antonio, the All-Southern Exhibition in Nashville, the Texas State Exposition in Austin, and countless others. She is well represented in private collections throughout the South.