Charles F. Quest

Charles F. Quest wanted to be an artist from when he was a boy and copied old-master paintings onto his bedroom walls. He studied art in Washington and then traveled to France, Spain, and England. Quest taught at the Washington University School of Fine Arts in St. Louis for many years, where he learned to make woodcuts and created many images of figures and still lifes. He found these “more enjoyable than any other means of expression” (Walker, “Charles Quest: Visions in Copper and Wood,” Summer 2002, Georgetown University Art Collection, online exhibition). He retired in the 1970s and moved to an artists’ colony in Tryon, North Carolina. He enjoyed the solitude of the colony and spent ten or twelve hours every day painting in his studio.