Artemesia Drefs

Artemesia Drefs was born on February 19, 1891, in Washington D.C., the daughter of Edwin A. Newman and his wife, Clara Artemesia Newman. She married Arthur C. Drefs, a St. Louisan and president of the McQuay-Norris Manufacturing Co., in 1921. She was educated at Saint Joseph College in Emmitsburg, Maryland, and traveled extensively in Europe, South America and the South Sea Islands before beginning her art training at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts at Washington University. She studied with Kenneth E. Hudson and Fred Conway and graduated with a bachelor's of fine arts in 1945.

Drefs’ paintings were exhibited in two solo shows at Lilienfeld Galleries in New York City in 1946 and 1949, and at Carroll-Knight Gallery in St. Louis in 1949. Drefs was an active member of The Saint Louis Woman’s Club. She died on January 18, 1979, at her home in Ladue, Missouri. She is the namesake of the Lake Artemesia Natural Area in Berwyn Heights, Maryland, a public green space that her father surveyed and that her family used as a goldfish farm.