1932-1933
Florence Weaver
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Florence Matilda Weaver (1879-1957) -- student
Florence Weaver, the youngest daughter of a Hamilton County, Iowa prominent educator and author, was born in Webster City, Iowa (1879). Her father, Alva A. Weaver, relocated the family to Des Moines (ca. 1890-1900); she later attended the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) (1898-1902) and participated in annual exhibitions of the Art Students League of Chicago (1902, 1904). She graduated in June 1902 and pursued further AIC art studies in 1903-1904, emphasizing painting and interior design.
After returning to Des Moines, she became the owner of The Odd Shop (early 1920s), a store devoted to wood, metal, and tapestries as decorative art. During the same decade, she participated in an extensive European tour group of interior decorators and architects for studies and travel. She later joined the staff of the Younker Brothers department store as an interior decorator and painter and had numerous shows in the company's tea room. Weaver eventually became the head of the store's interior decorating department. Extensive, global travels fueled many of her landscapes, and in 1932, Weaver attended the first session of the Stone City art colony.
After the colony experience, Weaver resumed her travels, now taking art classes in Munich. Notably, she studied watercolors with Eliot O'Hara at his famous art school in Goose Rocks Beach, Maine (summer 1938). While her sister, Lillian, turned to the life of a professional educator and school administrator, Florence embraced her role as a talented painter. Her works were featured in a one-man show at the Younker Brothers Tea Room Galleries (Des Moines, IA; 1934) and at Iowa Artists Club exhibitions (1934-35). In 1935, Weaver won the William Cochrane prize from the Murphy Calendar Company of Red Oak, Iowa for her painting "Near the Wharf." A member of the Iowa Artists Club, Weaver moved to La Jolla, California in 1949. She became active in the local arts community and with the La Jolla Art Center. She remained in the community and died there in November 1957.
Online Resources on Florence M. Weaver:
Libraries of the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC).
.
8th Annual Exhibition of the Art Students League of Chicago, 1902.
Available: http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/pubs/1902/AIC1902ArtStLeag8_comb.pdf Libraries of the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). The Tenth Annual Exhibition of the
Art Students League, 1904.
Available:
http://www.artic.edu/aic/libraries/pubs/1904/AIC1904ArtSdt
Lge10thAn_comb.pdf PDF copy of newspaper clippings courtesy of the Kendall Young
Library, Webster City, IA. Undated painting. Image courtesy of Kathy Pedersen Nadler, La Quinta, CA., and
Janet Pedersen. Clipping from the Des Moines Register.
Florence Weaver (left) and her mother, Florence E. Weaver in their Des Moines garden, ca 1934. Image courtesy of the Kendall Young Library, Webster City, IA
Undated paintings. Images courtesy of Kathy Pedersen Nadler, La Quinta, CA., and Janet Pedersen.
When Tillage Begins: The Stone
City Art Colony and School
Published online October 2003 by the
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Mount Mercy University
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