This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| A painter of portraits and western landscapes, Bertha Ballou was the daughter of a military commander and was raised in a family that lived in the frontier Midwest and West because of her father's career.
When she was very young, they lived in Hornby, New York, but then spent many years in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and Fort Niobrara, Nebraska. She had formal art study at Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia and from 1911 to 1912 attended the Art Students League in New York and from 1916 to 1920, the Corcoran School in Washington DC. She lived briefly in Spokane, Washington and then studied from 1921 to 1924 at the Boston School of Fine Arts. From 1925 to 1927, she traveled in Italy on a Tiffany Scholarship.
She settled in Spokane and there became a noted portraitist and also turned to western themes, having done many sketches of these subjects as a child. She painted eastern Washington landscapes and from photographs, did a series of native American subjects including Chief Joseph and Chief Moses, both at the Spokane Public Library.
She also did murals of Northwest historical subjects and in the process of researching for a mural for the First Federal Savings and Loan Association, she lived for many months with the Colville tribe.
Her works can be found in Spokane in the Eastern Washington Memorial Museum and the Spokane County Courthouse and at Washington State University in Pulliam.
Source:
"An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West" by Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick |
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