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 Fawcetts
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,
Bettinas 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. Steinkes 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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