Born in Chicago, Nellie Knopf attended the Art Institute of Chicago where she studied under John Vanderpoel and Frederick Free. She graduated in 1900 with honors. The same year, she took a teaching position at Illinois State Woman's College (later MacMurray College). She remained at the college for 43 years, eventually becoming the director of the art department. Only five feet tall and hard of hearing, she was a determined artist who never let her deafness interfere with her painting or teaching career.
Nellie did not find the Illinois landscape particularly inspiring and began spending her summers between 1910-1917 studying landscape painting with Charles Woodbury in Maine. By the early 1920's, she had discovered the Rocky Mountains, whose scenery enlivened her subject matter and she took a sabbatical to travel out west. In 1922, she spent time painting in New Mexico, and the following year she studied throughout the summer with Sven BirgerSandzén and John Fabian Carlson at the Broadmoor Academy in Colorado Springs.
Sandzén's influence can be seen as she developed her own modernist style with bold colors, loose brush work and heavy impasto. Marguerite B. Williams of the Chicago Daily News noted, "Sandzén's influence can be seen in the almost masculine strength and vigor of Knopf's color and brushwork, although her work always retained an individual touch." In order to skirt any biases against female artists, Knopf began signing her works as "N.A.Knopf" in the early twenties.
In 1925, Nellie spent the summer in Glacier Park, Montana. Although she traveled extensively in Europe in the thirties, she did not find the way of life to her liking. When asked about her painting in Colorado, she responded, "to say 'why' it was painted is only to attempt to express in words the emotion that lies back of the impulse which impels the artist to express in visual terms - the beauty he has found in nature and so make it intelligible to others. The old stunted cypress growing among the rocks, set high against the beautifully patterned foothills, with Baldy and Cheyenne [mountains] beyond, and over it all the charm of the Colorado day, was true, a motif that held much delight."
Retiring from Illinois State in 1943, she continued her travels in the West and spent time in Mexico. Near the end of her life, Nellie triumphantly declared "I have done miles of paintings, some of them very good."
She died in Michigan in 1962, where she had moved to be near her nephew.
Exhibited: Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia 1925, 1927, 1929; National Academy of Design, New York City, 1926; City Art Museum of St Louis, Missouri; Baltimore Watercolor Club, Maryland; Detroit Institute of Art, Michigan, 1942, 1943; Annual Exhibition of Works by Chicago and Vicinity Artists, Art Institute Chicago, 1914, 1920-1922, 1925-27, 1930,19 37; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1929, 1935; Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio; Illinois Society of Fine Arts, Chicago; Indiana Arts Club; Allied Artists of America, New York City; Philadelphia Water Color Club; John Herron Art Institute Indianapolis, Indiana; Chicago Academy of Fine Arts; American Federation of Arts, New York City; Broadmoor Academy, Colorado Springs, Colorado; Chicago Galleries Association (solo), 1938; American Water Color Society; Connecticut Academy of Fine Art, Hartford, Connecticut; Exhibition of Oil Paintings by Illinois Artists, Peoria Society of Allied Arts, Peoria Illinois, 1918;.
Works Held: Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art, Colorado; MacMurray College, Illinois; Colby College Museum of Art, Maine; The John H. Vanderpoel Art Association, Illinois.
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