Louise Heuser Wueste (Wüste), the first professional woman artist and portrait painter in San Antonio and western Texas during the 1860s and 1870s, was born in Gummersbach, Germany, on June 6, 1805, the daughter of Heinrich Daniel Theodor and Louise (Jügel) Heuser. Her father had a successful business in manufacturing and importing paints, and her sisters married Karl Friedrich Lessing and Adolph Schroedter. Wueste later studied portraiture with Friedrich Boser and Karl Ferdinand Sohn, both eminent artists of the Düsseldorf Academy, a recognized center for realistic, historical narrative painting. Louise married Peter Wilhelm Leopold Wueste, a physician, in 1824 and had three children before his death at the age of thirty seven. Thereafter, she resumed her art career as a teacher of portraiture. In 1859 she followed her son and two daughters to Texas and opened her studio in San Antonio in 1860. During the Civil War (/handbook/online/articles/qdc02) she moved to Piedras Negras, Mexico, to live with her son. She received few commissions for work her first years in North America. After 1865, however, she found many opportunities—painting and teaching art classes in one of her studios. She also taught in the local German-English school. Most of her paintings are formal portraits, including those of her family and friends, although she also rendered landscapes in pencil. Particularly interesting were her sympathetic pencil and oil portraits of children, including her own grandchildren, pictured in mid-nineteenth century costume, in the Biedermeier manner.
Louise Heuser Wueste (Wüste), the first professional woman artist and portrait painter in San Antonio and western Texas during the 1860s and 1870s, was born in Gummersbach, Germany, on June 6, 1805, the daughter of Heinrich Daniel Theodor and Louise (Jügel) Heuser. Her father had a successful business in manufacturing and importing paints, and her sisters married Karl Friedrich Lessing and Adolph Schroedter. Wueste later studied portraiture with Friedrich Boser and Karl Ferdinand Sohn, both eminent artists of the Düsseldorf Academy, a recognized center for realistic, historical narrative painting. Louise married Peter Wilhelm Leopold Wueste, a physician, in 1824 and had three children before his death at the age of thirty seven. Thereafter, she resumed her art career as a teacher of portraiture. In 1859 she followed her son and two daughters to Texas and opened her studio in San Antonio in 1860. During the Civil War (/handbook/online/articles/qdc02) she moved to Piedras Negras, Mexico, to live with her son. She received few commissions for work her first years in North America. After 1865, however, she found many opportunities—painting and teaching art classes in one of her studios. She also taught in the local German-English school. Most of her paintings are formal portraits, including those of her family and friends, although she also rendered landscapes in pencil. Particularly interesting were her sympathetic pencil and oil portraits of children, including her own grandchildren, pictured in mid-nineteenth century costume, in the Biedermeier manner.
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