Nell Walker Warner (1891-1970) American, Oil on Canvas. Painting of houses in rolling hills. Signed lower right. 

Overall: 28 1/2 X 34 1/4 in. 

Sight: 24 3/4 X 30 in. 

#2723 . 

Nell Gertrude Walker was born on April 1st, 1891 in Falls City, Nebraska. She was raised in Colorado Springs and attended Lexington College in Missouri, where she graduated in 1910. She moved to Los Angeles to pursue training in art, graduating from the School of Art and Design in 1916. In 1920 she married Bion Smith Warner, an osteopath who had served in World War I. For the next decade she studied under Nicolai Fechin and Paul Lauritz, honing her skills in oil paintings of still lifes and landscapes. She became a member of numerous California art groups, including the Art Club, the Watercolor Society, and the Laguna Beach Society. Bion died in 1937, and she eventually remarried in 1945 to a businessman named Emil Shostrom. In 1946 she was elected president of the Women Painters of the West, and designed a mansion named La Cañada in the mountains near Los Angeles where she and Emil lived until 1950. During this time she became the curator for the Tuesday Afternoon Club and worked at Walt Disney Studios, publishing a book titled “How Nell Walker Warner Paints in Oils.” Her solo exhibition in Honolulu in 1950 garnered national attention, but she retired from public life to a new home in Carmel-by-the-Sea, painting solely for herself until her death on November 30th, 1970. Her work can be found in numerous private collections and is on permanent display at the Museum of Nebraska Art.