Jessie Drew-Bear’s colorful art and unconventional life

Drew-Bear poured a lifetime of artistic inspiration into a 24-year career, depicting everything that made her happy: her beautiful homes and beloved poodles, abundant flowers, and exotic destinations. She painted real things with whimsy and fanciful things with confidence, weaving memory and imagination to produce work that blooms with joy and sly humor. Intrigued by the sea, Drew-Bear took up scuba diving when she was well into her 70s and then created magical realms of faithfully rendered plants and sea creatures, stalked by underwater tigers and snakes.

From real to surreal

Woodmere Assistant Curator Rachel McCay, in the exhibit catalog, traces the progression of Drew-Bear’s subjects: “In the 1940s she was inspired by literary sources like Alice in Wonderland…[evolving] in the late 1940s and early '50s into representations of seemingly imagined theatrical events, and places like Coney Island. Later, her paintings push completely into a world of fantasy.”

While her subjects and technique evolved, Drew-Bear’s enthusiasm held steady. Life bursts from her canvases, from Show Dahlia (1939), depicting an enormous pink flower, each petal bearing a tiny face, to Dog Show (1961), in which poodles tumble across the canvas in impasto clumps. Swaths of color are incised with detailed patterns, often drawn in pen. Carpets are intricately patterned, railings are ornate scrolls, and clothes are frilled. Flowers are fireworks, and fireworks are flowers.

A feminist before feminism

She was born Jessie Henderson in 1879 in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, England, next-to-last of 14 children. By 1905, she had married Tom Emile Drew-Bear, given birth to two sons and a daughter, and set sail on the SS Merion for Philadelphia. She was not yet 30.

The details are murky. Drew-Bear traveled alone, or perhaps with Joy, her infant daughter. Her sons remained in England for a time, but eventually all three children came to Philadelphia. It is unclear what transpired with her husband, whether she was widowed, divorced, or separated. This path, a maybe-wife and mother starting an independent life in another country, owning a thriving business, and pursuing painting at an advanced age, would be uncommon today. In Drew-Bear’s time, it was almost unimaginable.

By 1910, she established the London Flower Shop on Chestnut Street, known for elegant arrangements that decorated society galas and debutante balls. The shop exposed Drew-Bear to the people who made, collected, and exhibited art. Her success with the shop, which she would own for 40 years, enabled Drew-Bear to educate her children at Episcopal Academy and Springside School, and to travel extensively.

A gift inspires a career

For Christmas 1938, Drew-Bear received a set of paints from her daughter, and it changed her world. Then 59, she began classes with painter Arthur B. Carles. Those lessons, and a month spent in the atelier of Fernand Léger in 1949, were her only formal training.

Drew-Bear resided in Philadelphia throughout her life, except for five years when she lived in New Hope, and her work was often exhibited locally. She had solo shows at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art (PAFA), and the Newman Contemporary Art Gallery (now Newman Galleries). Individual paintings were included in several PAFA exhibitions, and Turkey Knob Farm (1949) is in the museum’s permanent collection. The Philadelphia Museum of Art owns a late-career Drew-Bear, Still Life: Cocktails (1960). Despite a high level of success, particularly in view of her late entry into painting, the art world's awareness of Drew-Bear receded after her 1962 death at home in Philadelphia.

The Woodmere remembers

The Woodmere, which celebrates Philadelphia artists, first exhibited Drew-Bear in 1949 and included the artist in numerous group exhibitions over the years, most recently in 2011 and 2012. Its collection contains several of her paintings, and others have been promised to the museum by the Drew-Bear family.

Drew-Bear is deserving of the retrospective exhibit, according to art critic Edward Sozanski, who called Drew-Bear “a fabulist with a charming, untutored style.” In addition, though, Drew-Bear's life should inspire any person of a certain age who yearns to try something completely different, or needs to break free and start over, or who has a vision to express. Maybe this time the world, having caught up with a woman who was in so many ways ahead of her time, will take more lasting notice.