Kathryn E. Cherry

Kathryn Cherry was an influential St. Louis painter, ceramicist, designer, and art educator in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Cherry was a versatile and multi-talented artist, equally prolific as a china painter and decorator, the medium which brought her success early in her career, and as a post-impressionist painter specializing in still-life and landscape.

Originally from Quincy, Illinois, Cherry first came to St. Louis in 1889 to study at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts. She subsequently studied under Richard Miller at the New York School of Fine Arts, and under the ceramicist Marshall Fry at Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art. A lifelong learner, Cherry continually refined her craft by collaborating with some of the leading artists of her day, including Arthur Wesley Dow, William Merritt Chase, and St. Louisan Dawson Dawson-Watson, among others.

Cherry maintained a commitment to education throughout her career. In 1909, she accepted a teaching position in china decoration at the Art Academy of the American Woman’s League in University City, Missouri. Cherry taught at University City from 1909-1911, some of the University City Pottery’s most prolific years, and came to be recognized as one of the leading educators in china painting and decoration in the United States. At University City, Cherry worked alongside other pioneering figures in the field, such as the renowned French ceramicist Taxile Doat and Adelaide Alsop Robineau, a nationally known ceramicist and china decorator who had also spent a summer at the Shinnecock Hills Colony. In fact, Cherry had previously taken lessons at Robineau’s New York studio, and was regularly featured in Robineau’s monthly publication dedicated to ceramic decoration, Keramic Studio. In one Keramic article, Cherry was said to have “so far out-stripped her teacher [Robineau], both in design and execution of overglaze decoration, that if the latter returned to this field...she would need to take lessons of her pupil” (Robineau, "Mrs. Kathryn E. Cherry," 178).

In 1915, Cherry curtailed her work in ceramics after Taxile Doat departed the United States. That same year, she succeeded her close friend, noted landscape painter Frederick Oakes Sylvester, as Art Director at Principia College, a position that she held until her death in 1931. Cherry had been a frequent visitor to Sylvester’s summer cottage in Elsah, Illinois, near Principia, where he often invited small groups of friends to paint. During this period, Cherry shifted her focus to oil painting in a distinctive post-impressionist style, particularly still-life. The painting Fish, Fruits, and Flowers, currently housed at the St. Louis Art Museum, was produced during this time, and is indicative of her work in this style, with subjects rendered in vivid, saturated colors and set against a dynamic and highly patterned backdrop.

Kathryn Cherry died in 1931 at the age of sixty after a two-year long struggle with cancer, leaving a remarkable legacy in St. Louis both as a prolific artist and craftsperson and a beloved educator.