Irma Rene Koen

American (1884-1975)

Born in Rock Island, Illinois in 1884, Koen studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Europe. A member of the Chicago Paint & Sketch Club, the New York Water Color Club, the Illinois Society of Artists and the Chicago Art Club, Koen exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and at the Corcoran Gallery in 1921. During the 1920s, Koen traveled from Chicago, where she was living, to New England, spending the summer months in Massachusetts and Maine. While in Maine, she painted with the Boothbay Harbor summer art colony, painting alongside New Hope impressionists William Lathrop and Henry Snell.