Virginia Terpening

Until the rediscovery and subsequent publicization of her work in 2013, the art and career of painter Virginia Terpening (1917-2007) had been nearly forgotten. Although she was not widely known in her lifetime, Terpening’s work has been compared to the regionalist style made popular by artists such as Thomas Hart Benton in the 1940s. Her landscapes and portraits documented the unique character of the state where she lived her whole life.

Terpening was a native of Lewistown, Missouri. Her father, Floyd Shoup, represented Lewistown in the Missouri state legislature, and her mother, Bertha Shoup, was a historian. Terpening attended Jefferson City High School while her father served in the House of Representatives. Terpening initially attended William Woods College in Fulton, Missouri, from 1936-1937, and went on to study painting at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts from 1937-1939.

Terpening spent most of her time in and around Lewistown, where she worked as a commercial artist, painting commercial vehicles, storefronts and signs for local businesses. In 1958, Terpening submitted a design for the 1960 Christmas Seal for the Tuberculosis and Health Society of St. Louis, receiving Honorable Mention. However, she largely painted for her own enjoyment, and kept most of her work.

Terpening rarely, if ever, left the state of Missouri, though her works were exhibited across the United States and internationally. Her paintings appeared in solo exhibitions at Culver-Stockton College (Canton, Missouri), Creative Gallery in New York, and The Breakers in Palm Beach, Florida. Terpening twice displayed work at the Missouri Exhibition at the City Art Museum, as well as international exhibitions in Paris and Nairobi, Kenya. She served as chairwoman for the Centennial Art Exhibit in Lewistown in 1971, and again for the U.S. Bicentennial in 1976. In 1979, one of Terpening’s paintings, Mississippi Riverboat, was presented to President Jimmy Carter by the Lewis County Democratic Committee in Canton.

In 2013, six years after the artist’s death in 2007, a local man purchased Terpening’s old trailer in Lewistown and discovered more than 100 of her canvases in the trailer and another 200 in a dilapidated bus parked on the property. The discovery sparked interest in such a vast body of work that had to that point remained hidden, and was featured in several local newspapers, including St. Louis’s Riverfront Times. The paintings were eventually auctioned off individually to various private collectors and institutions throughout the state.

In 2014, St. Louis art gallery The Hinge mounted an exhibition titled Yes, Virginia, There Is…: the Artwork of Virginia Terpening, highlighting several of the paintings, as well as personal artifacts from Terpening’s estate. Today, Terpening’s works can be viewed at the St. Louis Mercantile Library Art Museum at the University of Missouri, St. Louis.