Louise Emerson Ronnebeck (1901 – 1980)
WPA Mural Proposal, Worland, Wyoming Post Office
Image 7 x 15 inches
Board 14 x 22 inches
Watercolor on paper backing paper, 1937
Unframed

Louise Emerson Ronnebeck was born in Philadelphia in 1901. She attended Barnard College, the American School in Fontainebleau, France, and Art Students League of New York. Her teachers included Kenneth Hayes Miller and George Bridgman.

On a summer 1925 visit to Mabel Dodge Lujan’s ranch in Taos, New Mexico, she met the sculptor Arnold Rönnebeck, whom she married in 1926. In that same year her husband was appointed director of the Denver Art Museum.

A noted portraitist, Louise was also one of Colorado’s most important public muralists, working frequently in fresco. She executed mural commissions for the Federal Art Project, including Worland Wyoming Post Office in 1937 and Grand Junction Colorado Post Office in 1940. Locally she executed commissions for Morey Junior High School, Denver; Robert Speer Memorial Hospital for Children, Denver; Church of the Holy Redeemer, Denver; Cosmopolitan Hotel, Denver; U.S.O Building, Denver; and the Denver City and County Building.

From 1945-1951 she was on the faculty of the University of Denver, teaching drawing and painting. She was a founding member of the Fifteen Colorado Artists, a group the split from the Denver Artists Guild. She also exhibited widely, including at Denver Art Museum, Denver; Kirkland Museum, Denver; the National Exhibition of American Art at Rockefeller Center, New York; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha; Colorado Springs Fine Art Center; Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles; and Legion of Honor Museum, San Francisco.

In 1954 she relocated to Bermuda where she taught art and executed a large fresco for St. Brendon’s Hospital. She returned to Denver in 1973.

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