Mabel Meeker Edsall

Mabel Meeker Edsall was a St. Louis painter, sculptor, and art educator who was active in the early- to mid-twentieth century. She became known for her incisive portraits and political work in the New Deal era. Later in her career, she experimented with abstraction and religious themes in her paintings.

Born around 1882 in Bay City, Michigan, Edsall studied at the Art Students League of New York with the American impressionist William Merritt Chase, and also won a scholarship to study in Florence, Italy. An art teacher in the fall and winter months, Edsall traveled during the summers and, like many of her contemporaries, frequented art colonies such as those in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and Old Lyme, Connecticut.

Edsall moved to St. Louis in 1914 following her marriage to Joseph P. Edsall, and began teaching, offering classes at the Young Women’s Christian Association and private lessons out of her home studio. In 1931, she became head of the Painting Department at the John Burroughs School in Ladue, Missouri, a position which she held until 1955. She was a member of the St. Louis Artists’ Guild, the St. Louis Artists League, the Western Arts Association, and the Academy of Professional Artists, St. Louis. Edsall exhibited her work frequently, though she claimed in a 1932 article that she was not concerned with awards and prizes. Rather, she noted, “... I should keep on painting forever, no matter what anyone else might say” (St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 17, 1932). In 1933, Edsall’s work was included in the Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago.

Edsall experimented with a wide range of media and subjects, but was particularly known for her portraits and politically charged work. She had a close relationship with fellow artist Jessie Beard Rickly, a founder of the Ste. Genevieve Art Colony and politically vocal artist. Edsall became a member of the Missourians, a group of progressive artists formed by Rickly in 1946.

Edsall and Rickly mounted several joint exhibitions, the first of which was titled The Battlecry of Freedom and held at the St. Louis Artists’ Guild in 1944. The show included eighty canvases, including Edsall’s Follies of 1932-1944, which personified the alphabet programs of the New Deal as a series of careless clown-like figures. Follies, along with eleven other paintings from the exhibition, were removed from the gallery after two days by the Guild Board of Directors, who cited the works’ objectionable content. The controversy attracted local press, and sparked a dialogue surrounding free speech and censorship in art. Edsall and Rickly subsequently collaborated on an exhibition of political cartoons at the Noonan-Kocian Gallery in 1948, and returned to the Artists’ Guild for a joint exhibition titled Forever Free in 1951.

Edsall was active in the St. Louis region until she suffered a stroke in 1972. The artist died the following year in Des Peres, Missouri.