Grace Spaulding John
(1890-1892) Houston, Texas

     Grace Spaulding John was born in 1890 in Battle Creek, Michigan. She was an eleventh-generation descendent of Edward and Margaret Spaulding, who immigrated to America in 1619. Grace spent the first 13 years of her life in Vermont, but her family moved to Beaumont after oil was discovered there. Grace studied art under Penelope Lingan of Beaumont, a portraitist and miniaturist who helped her to begin her study at the St. Louis School of Fine Art in St. Louis, MO in 1909. In 1912 She began study at the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 1913 she married Roy Keehne. They had two children before their divorce in 1917. Grace married Alfred Morgan John, and attorney from Houston in 1921.

     Grace studied under Frederic Lloyd Bridgemn, and she received a Tiffany Foundation Fellowship in 1923. Following her study at the Tiffany estate, Grace returned to Texas but traveled to Europe and Mexico, which she painted many scenes of the countries she visited. Grace also lived in painted in many parts of the country.

     She also studied at the National Academy of Design under Joseph Pennell; The Pennsylvania Academy under Daniel Garber; The Arts Students League under Guy Pene Du Bois, George Bridgeman and in Taos under Emile Bistram.

     She painted in oils, watercolor, pastel, conte crayon, charcoal, pen and ink and one of the first artists to use Plexiglas as a medium, which she used a dentist drill to work the Plexiglas.

     She was an active exhibitor and won many awards.

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