Helen Eakins Bowen (20th century) was an artist native to Virginia and known for her landscapes and abstract figures. Active in New York City, Bowen received numerous honors such as the Louis Jambor Award and the James Augustus Suydam bronze medal at the National Academy of Design, presented to the student with the highest degree of proficiency in life drawing and painting. She also received the Louis Jambor Memorial Award (1962-1964) as well as scholarships to the Brackman School of Art (1961) and the National Academy of Arts (1966). Her teachers included Marshall Glasier, Robert Brackman, Thomas Fogarty, and Robert Beverly Hale at the Art Students League; Raphael Soyer and Robert Philipp at the National Academy of Fine Arts; and Giuseppe Cavalieri of Sicily and Rome, Italy. Later in life Bowen befriended arts patron Caresse Crosby, who purchased and operated Castello Rocca Sinibalda in Italy as an artists’ colony until her death in 1970. She visited Crosby in the castle during the summer of 1968 and lived her dream of painting in Europe. Bowen’s works were hung in the embassies of Khartoum, Sudan, and Tokyo, Japan. Her paintings were exhibited at the Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, New Jersey; the Cooperstown Art Association, New York; the Mystic Outdoor Art Festival, Connecticut; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Club, and the American Artists Professional League, all in New York City. Public collections include the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, South Carolina; the Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia; the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee; the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and many private collections.
