Nell Walker Warner

Nell Gertrude Walker Warner
American, 1891-1970

Nell Walker Warner was born in Richardson County, Nebraska on April 1, 1891. She was educated in Colorado Springs where she began her art studies at age eleven. After graduating from Lexington College, Missouri in 1910, she moved to California to earn a degree from the Los Angeles School of Art and Design in 1916.

After marrying her first husband, Dr. Bion S. Warner, in 1920, Nell traveled to Europe where she sketched and painted travel scenes in watercolor and gouache. When home in Southern California again, she continued her art studies with Nicolai Fechin and Paul Lauritz. She soon earned memberships in the California Art Club, California Watercolor Society, Women Painters of the West, Laguna Beach Art Association, Glendale Art Association, Academy of Western Painters, Society of Western Artists, and Pasadena Society of Artists. Exhibiting her landscapes and still lifes from coast to coat, Nell garnered myriad awards and accolades.

In addition, Nell served as art curator for the Tuesday Afternoon Club in Los Angeles and worked in the art department of Walt Disney Studios executing illustrations and titles for films. She frequently spent the summers in Cape Ann, Massachusetts where she produced distinguished harbor scenes with her acute observational skills, attention to details, and unwavering adherence to the fundamentals of technique and composition.

In 1945 Nell married Emil Shostrom and together they resumed her extensive European as well as Latin American travels during the 1950s. Five years later they moved north to Carmel where she became an Artist Member of the Carmel Art Association and authored a book titled How Nell Walker Warner Paints in Oils, published in the Walter T. Foster instructional series. Nell was known as “America’s foremost painter of flowers.” Since her death on November 30, 1970, she is best remembered for her floral still lifes and New England waterfront views.

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