Paulette Van Roekens

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Paulette Van Roekens (December 31, 1895 – January 11, 1988) was an American artist born in a farmhouse near Château-Thierry, France. She moved to Glenside, Pennsylvania with her parents, Victor and Jeanne van Roekens, where her father worked as a horticulturist.

In 1915 she began studying at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art). She won the John Sartain Fellowship in 1916. Van Roekens also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and learned sculpture at the Graphic Sketch Club in Philadelphia. She studied with artists Henry B. Snell, Leopold Seyffert, Joseph Pearson, and Charles Grafly.

She became a professor of drawing and painting at Moore College of Art in 1923 and taught there for nearly 40 years. When she retired in 1961, the college awarded her an honorary doctorate. In 1927 she married fellow Moore College artist Arthur Meltzer, and they had two children, Davis Paul and Joanne. They lived in the Philadelphia area for the rest of their lives, each keeping a studio in the family home and painting subjects from New York as well as outdoor scenes from Europe.

Van Roekens worked in oils and pastels, with early still lifes giving way to more landscapes as her career developed. She described herself as a “sometimes impressionist,” influenced by impressionism but still rooted in academic drawing. She exhibited widely, including 14 solo exhibitions (the first in 1920) and two retrospective shows with her husband. Her final exhibition appeared only a few months before her death.

Her work is in the collections of several major museums, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the National Academy of Design, the Carnegie Institute, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Mint Museum in Charlotte, the Albright Gallery, and the Detroit Institute of Art. She was a member of the Art Alliance of America and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors.