Katharine Steele Renninger

American (1925-2004)

Katharine Steele Renninger was born in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania in 1925 and grew up on a farm midway between New Hope and Philadelphia. She graduated from Moore Institute of Art where she received the John F. Lewis European Traveling Fellowship in 1946 through which she lived and studied on the left bank of Paris for a year. Later she studied with Paul Domeville at the University of Pennsylvania and taught at St. Mary’s Hall in Burlington, New Jersey, and at Moore Institute where she was an instructor in drawing from 1950 to 1954.

An abstract realist, Renninger had nearly 75 solo shows. Her subjects typically focused on Bucks County architecture and artifacts: details of barns and Victorian buildings, collections of egg beaters, bottles and chairs. Her work was included in many prestigious exhibitions and received numerous awards including the Woodmere Art Museum, the Museo des Belles Artes in Caracas, the Butler Institute of American Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Delaware Art Museum and the National Academy of Design.

Renninger’s work is in the James A. Michener Art Museum, William Penn Memorial Museum, Rutgers University Gallery and the DeVecchi Collection of the Rodman House for the Arts, among others.