Josephine Adreon

Josephine Adreon was a St. Louis landscape painter active in the late nineteenth century. She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of William P. Young and his wife, Minerva. She moved to St. Louis in 1868 and married Edward L. Adreon, a founder of the American Brake Co. and former comptroller of the city, in 1871.

Adreon began her studies shortly after her marriage and trained under Joseph Rusling Meeker, a renowned St. Louis painter. Adreon excelled at landscape painting, particularly marsh scenes in oil and watercolor, such as Western Sunset, Forest Swamp, Southern Swamp and Marsh Landscape.

Apart from her art, Adreon was a wife and mother, and a prominent member of St. Louis society. She did not exhibit frequently, though her paintings were shown in the St. Louis Exposition in 1881 and the St. Louis Exposition and Music Hall Association in 1885 and 1887. Most of her works were displayed and carefully curated in her home at 5713 Cabanne Ave., which doubled as her studio and was featured in an edition of the St. Louis magazine Reedy’s Mirror in 1914. Adreon died of pneumonia in 1911 at the age of sixty-seven, leaving behind some seventy-two paintings. She is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis.