Sister Cassiana Marie

Born in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, in 1883, Sister Cassiana Marie Vogt (born Martha Vogt), was a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, and was also an active oil painter.

In 1919, she attended The Art Institute of Chicago, where she studied composition, color theory, drawing and painting from life. She taught art at the St. Joseph Academy in Green Bay, Wisconsin, between 1913 and 1915, and again from 1921-1942.

However, during the 1930s, she discreetly spent her summers teaching art and working alongside other artists such as Thomas Hart Benton and her nephew Matthew Ziegler, as an active member of the famed Ste. Genevieve Art Colony in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. While there, she was exposed to many progressive and forward-thinking ideas of the time, and according to various letters she wrote to her nephew, she apparently relished the freedom to do so while there with other artists. Especially free-thinking, considering her role as a Catholic nun, Sister Cassiana Marie believed that an artist had “privileged knowledge” and brought a “sensitive awareness” that allowed seeing the natural world where “beauty was supreme to dogma” (Kerr & Dick, An American Art Colony, 157).

Sister Cassiana died in Richmond Heights, Missouri in 1944.