Bettina Steinke has been called “The Grand Dame”, the best female Western portraitist in the country.” Bettina died in her beloved town of Santa Fe, July 13, 1999. Although she became interested in art as a career at the age of twelve, it was not until she was seventeen that she began her formal training in art. She attended Fawcett’s Art School in Newark, New Jersey and then studied at Cooper Union and the Phoenix Art Institute in New York City. A celebration and success from the beginning, Bettina had received numerous commissions by age twenty-eight and was then inducted into the prestigious Society of Illustrators. She has profiled people such as Joel and Francis McCrea, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Spencer Tracy, Katherine Hepburn, fellow artists including Leon Gaspard, George Carlson, Robert Lougheed, and a host of others. Considering western themes as her favorite art representations, Bettina’s portrayals of both Indians and Eskimos are expressive in their vitality, rich and velvety in their strong accurate coloration's and serene in the image they present the viewer. Steinke’s paintings are very much involved with people of several races and nationalities. She says, “I watch constantly for typical postures, the habits and physical types within ethnic groups...our western heritage covers a broad range of subject matter, and all of it is of great interest to painters living in this wide country.”



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Costa Rica

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Wiley Post
Eiteljorg Museum of American
Indians and Western Art
500 West Washington
Indianapolis, IN  46204
www.eiteljorg.org
National Cowboy and Western
Heritage Museum
1700 NE 63rd Street
Oklahoma City, OK  73111
www.cowboyhalloffame.org
Pearce Collections Museum 3100 W. Collin St.
Corsicana, TX  75110
www.pearcecollections.us
Roswell Museum and Art Center 100 West 11th
Roswell, NM  88201
www.roswellmuseum.org
Sangre De Cristo Arts Center 210 N Santa Fe Avenue
Pueblo, CO  81003
 
Stark Museum of Art P.O. Box 1897
Orange, TX  77631
www.starkmuseum.org
The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art University Of Oklahoma
555 Elm Avenue
Norman, OK  73019
www.ou.edu/fjjma
The Harwood Museum of Art 238 Ledoux Street
Taos, NM  87571-6004
www.harwoodmuseum.org
Woolaroc Museum The Frank Phillips Foundation Inc.
RR 3 Box 2100
Bartlesville, OK  74003
www.woolaroc.org