Rowena Meeks Abdy (April 24, 1887 – August 18, 1945) was an American painter who flourished in Northern California in the early 20th century. Working in oil, watercolour and charcoal, she achieved prominence in the en plein air painting school and is held in several permanent collections of significant museums. She had significant interactions with other famous California artists such as Armin Hansen and Arthur Frank Mathews.

Weeks was born in Vienna to wealthy American parents, with whom she moved to San Francisco at age three. Although crippled at birth, she proved motivated as a young girl and enrolled in the Mark Hopkins Art Institute in her early teens. There she studied under Arthur Frank Mathews.

In the year 1910 she married writer Harry B. Abdy, and the couple established their first home in the thriving art colony at Monterey, California. In Monterey she studied with the distinguished California artist Armin Hansen. In Monterey she enjoyed painting views of wharves and fisheries activity as did her coeval painter Lillie May Nicolson. Later she moved to San Juan Bautista, where her fondness for Spanish architecture led her to build a mission style home. In 1917 she moved again south to San Diego, but by 1926 she surfaced again in residence on Lombard Street, San Francisco, considered the world's crookedest street. She remained in San Francisco until her death from alcoholism.

Abdy's works are held in the following permanent collections:

• California Palace of the Legion of Honor
• Commercial Club, San Francisco
• Mills College, Oakland, California
• Nevada Museum of Art, Reno
• Seattle Art Museum

Bibliography

• Bulletin of the New York Public Library Astor Lenox and Tilden Foundations p772
• Independent Spirits, edited by Patricia Trenton, {1995)
• R.R. Bowker, American Art Directory (1999)
• Susan Landauer, American Impressionists (1996)

External links

• World Wide Art Resources page