Augusta Finkelnburg

Augusta Finkelnburg was an early 20th-century St. Louis painter best known for her landscape work. She was originally from Fountain City, Wisconsin, and demonstrated a natural talent for art at a young age. She studied at The Art Institute of Chicago, the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, the Académie Colarossi in Paris, and in England, Holland and Italy. Finkelnburg studied with some of the most prominent landscape painters of the time, including Willard Metcalf, Henry B. Snell and Arthur Wesley Dow. Following in the impressionist tradition of her teachers, Finkelnburg’s landscapes are characterized by short, quick brush strokes and vibrant colors.

Finkelnburg moved to St. Louis in 1900, and initially worked as a drawing supervisor in St. Louis public high schools. She later became an art instructor, a position which she held for thirty years.

Finkelnburg was well-connected and prolific within the St. Louis arts community. She was a member of the St. Louis Artists’ Guild and the Society of Western Artists, and also exhibited with the St. Louis Art League and the St. Louis Society of Independent Artists. Through the Guild, Finkelnburg was introduced to a small nucleus of women artists including Martha Hoke, Cornelia Maury, Mary McColl and Grace Morrill, with whom she participated in the St. Louis Artists’ Guild Four Painters Exhibition in 1922.

Nationally, Finkelnburg’s paintings were shown at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915, and at the Exhibition of Watercolors by American Artists at The Art Institute of Chicago in 1917. On November 7, 1915, a solo exhibition titled A Collection of Works by Augusta Finkelnburg opened at the City Art Museum in St. Louis. The landmark show was the first exhibition of a local woman painter to be held at the museum.

Finkelnburg took a strong interest in travel and made seven trips abroad to paint. Her works were influenced by her travels to Holland, Germany, France, England, Spain, and especially Italy.

In 1929, Finkelnburg retired to Kimmswick, Missouri, a small community on the Mississippi River just south of St. Louis. Compared to St. Louis, the slower pace of Kimmswick allowed her to focus on her art in a more secluded setting. Finkelnburg continued to paint and remained active throughout her retirement until the early 1940s. She died on December 11, 1944, in Kimmswick.