Vivian Louise Aunspaugh

Vivian Louise Aunspaugh (born Bedford, Virginia, August 14, 1869 - died Dallas, Texas, March 9, 1960) was an American painter and art teacher who founded the first art school in the American Southwest to use live models, nude and draped.

Early life Aunspaugh was born on August 14, 1869 to John Henry Aunspaugh and Virginia Fields (Yancy) Aunspaugh in Bedford, Virginia. Aunspaugh's father was a cotton buyer, and the family followed him to various locations in the South during her childhood - Virginia, Alabama, South Carolina, and finally Georgia. At sixteen Aunspaugh was awarded the Excelsior Art Medal when she graduated from Shorter College (in Rome, Georgia). She began teaching at Women's College (Union Springs, Alabama).

The next year, she continued her studies. Over the next five years she spent time studying in New York with John Henry Twachtman at the Art Students League of New York and in Paris with Alphonse Mucha

Career Returning to America in 1890, she taught art at various schools and colleges for the next decade, including McKinney College in Texas, Greenville Public Schools, and Masonic Female College in Mississippi. In Dallas she taught at Patton Female Seminary and St Mary's College. In 1900 she received a gold medal award when she exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. a fellow teacher at St. Mary's College in San Antonio, Chandler left Texas in 1903 to study in Chicago, and Aunspaugh continued to run the school herself.

Aunspaugh was art editor for the Dixieland magazine, which was first issued in 1904. At that time, the Texas art community was just developing. The first annual exhibition of the Fort Worth Art Association was held in 1910.

Her work has been included in a number of museum exhibitions, such as Early Texas Artists, 1900-1950 (The Grace Museum, 2006) and Lone Star Still Lifes (Panhandle–Plains Historical Museum, 2009).

Death She continued to teach art until shortly before her death in 1960 at age 90.