Coppedge, Fern Isabel

Fern Isabel Coppedge was born and raised in Decatur, Illinois. She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Students League in New York under William Merritt Chase, the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art & Design) under Henry Snell, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Daniel Garber. She visited New Hope in 1917, settling in Lumberville, near Garber, in 1920. Coppedge joined The Philadelphia Ten, a group of women artists, in 1922 and exhibited regularly with them through 1935. She and Mary Elizabeth Price became significant female painters in the otherwise male-dominated circle of the Pennsylvania Impressionists. Known to brave the chill of colder months to seek inspiration, her paintings of Bucks County’s winter scenery remain some of her best known today.