Below is information on the artists featured in Art's Gallery. Come back periodically to see what new artists have been added!

Fern I. Coppedge
American (1881–1951)

“People used to think me queer when I was a little girl because I saw deep purples and reds and violets in a field of snow. I used to be hurt over it until I gave up trying to understand people and concentrated on my love and understanding of landscapes. Then it didn’t make any difference.”

These were the words of Fern I. Coppedge, a Bucks County painter who struggled for understanding and acceptance most of her personal and professional life. Like many artists, she sometimes felt misunderstood and “different” from her peers. As a child in Illinois she was dazzled by sunlight reflected on snow. She loved music and nature, and she began taking watercolor classes as a teenager following an inspiring trip to the California coastline to visit her eldest sister in Palo Alto. The shimmering sea and the colorful snowfalls she encountered in nature later became constant themes in painting.

She attended the University of Kansas, where she met her husband, who encouraged her to pursue a career as a professional artist. The decision led Coppedge to train at the Chicago Institute of Art and the Art Students’ League in New York, and to spend summers at the Woodstock art colony. Exposure to the teaching methods of William Merritt Chase, the great American impressionist painter, and four summers studying with John F. Carlson, the en plein air painter, helped Coppedge to develop her own unique painting style. She moved to Philadelphia in 1918 to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where she met Professor Daniel Garber, one of the leaders of the New Hope School of Impressionism. Extra study at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art and Design) introduced Coppedge to other women artists with whom she would later form The Philadelphia Ten.

In 1920 Fern Coppedge bought a home across from Daniel Garber’s farm in Lumberville, approximately 6 miles from New Hope. It is here, in this geographic area, that many of her most famous paintings were completed. Coppedge settled into the New Hope art community and became a local icon—many residents recall seeing her trudge outdoors with her bearskin coat, paints, and easel during the snowy winter months. She died in New Hope on April 21, 1951, leaving a legacy of hundreds of paintings.

For more information, visit the Bucks County Artists' Database.