FLORENCE WARE

This fine teacher, painter, and spirited citizen was born and raised in Salt Lake City as the daughter of well-known local architect Walter E. Ware (q.v.). After studying art at the University of Utah (B.F.A.), she moved on for three years of postgraduate work at the Art Institute of Chicago; a twelve-month sojourn at Laguna Beach, California; and then eight months with Charles W. Hawthorne at Provincetown, Massachusetts. Beginning in 1918, Ware taught at the U of U for over twenty-five years (with occasional breaks for further study), and was a very active private instructor of art as well. Today, she is best known for her two WPA-sponsored murals in Kingsbury Hall at the U of U, for quite a number of fine, painterly landscape views in various Utah collections, and for several painted figure studies that very effectively express a woman's life. Ware was very interested in interior decoration as well; she once wrote, "Interior, fabrics, gardens, and nature I should like to arrange, so far as I am able, the perfect setting for a work of art." Ware's life was called "one of artistic harmony" by Mae Huntington of the Springville Gallery, a designation that seems entirely appropriate. Upon her passing, a Florence Ware bequest established a scholarship fund in her name for art students at the U of U. (b. May 6; d. November 11)

Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. ARTISTS OF UTAH. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999: 279.