Deborah Delp Weisel

Deborah Delp Weisel was born on October 3, 1868, in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. She graduated from the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Arts in Philadelphia. She received her bachelor’s of science and master’s of art from Columbia University in New York, and did graduate studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She studied under Hugh Breckenridge, Charles Martin and Frederick De Voll.

She was hired by Southwest Missouri State Teachers College in 1921 and was employed there until her death in 1950. She was head of the Art Department from 1921-1939, and emeritus head of the department from 1940-1950. One of her first classes, “Art for School Plays and Festivals,” painted scenes for the play Ivanhoe that was presented by the Junior High School in Springfield, Missouri in 1921. In 1942, the college’s yearbook, Ozarka, was dedicated to her.

Weisel was a painter, lithographer, etcher and engraver, and was active in several organizations: American Federation of Arts, Southern States Art League, Ozark Artists Association, Missouri State Teachers Association, Friends of Art (Springfield, Missouri), Western Art Association, and the Springfield Art Commission. She also exhibited at the Springfield Art Museum and was in exhibitions hosted by the Ozark Artists Association and Southern States Art League.

In 1926, Weisel led a group of women to start an Art Study Club, and in 1928 the group successfully incorporated as the Springfield Art Museum. As one of its founding members, she gifted one of her watercolor paintings, Landscape, to the museum.

She died on December 16, 1950.