Homan Quen

Homan Quen was a painter, sculptor, and commercial artist who was active in St. Louis in the 1930s.

Homan Quen was born in Canton, China in August 1907. His mother was an expert in Chinese needlework, and instructed Quen in this art when he was a child.  He came to Angel Island in San Francisco when he was eleven to live with his father. Quen arrived in St. Louis around 1925. He first worked in a laundry, and later worked as a waiter in a restaurant owned by his uncle. While working at the restaurant, he would sketch on the back of menus and he saved his money to study art. Quen enrolled at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts at Washington University in 1930. There he studied under Edmund Wuerpel and Fred Greene Carpenter. He won two awards while studying at the school. In 1932, he won the Waymon Crow Medal and a $150 scholarship that enabled him to continue his studies, despite his family's financial hardships due to the Great Depression. He also was elected treasurer of an honorary art fraternity at the school that year. In 1933 Quen won the Art Alliance scholarship for travel in Europe. He traveled to Europe for three months with fellow scholarship winner Otto Kiesker.

By 1940, Quen was living in McGhee, Arkansas, where he ran a grocery store. While working at the store, he continued to paint. During this period, in 1941, Quen traveled to Hutchinson, Kansas to take pictures of the flour mills and the salt mine there as studies for a mural for the new post office for which he was applying for the commission. Although it is unknown whether Quen received the commission, his 1941 research trip to Hutchinson is known because locals reported him to the police as a possible spy. The Kansas City Star reported that he proved his innocence by “making a good sketch of Orville Matthias, deputy sheriff.”(Kansas City Star, April 11, 1941). In 1943, according to the Belleville Daily News Democrat, Quen may have studied art in Kansas City with Thomas Hart Benton.

During World War II, Quen served with the 13th Air Force, with the rank of private. 

According to the 1950 United States Federal Census, Quen was living in San Francisco in 1950 and was working as a commercial artist. His studio was listed as the Homan Quen Studio. Quen was also listed in the 1970 San Francisco city directory as specializing in photo retouching.