Frank Nuderscher

Early is his career, Nuderscher did more illustration work than he did later in his career when his reputation as a painter allowed him to focus primarily in the fine arts. As an illustrator, he created commercial advertisements, architectural drawings, book illustrations, and magazine covers.[6] Succeeding Oscar E. Berninghaus, Nuderscher created the designs and drawings for the floats in the Veiled Prophet Parade between 1945 and 1954.[7]

Nuderscher's early oil paintings reflected the vibrant urban atmosphere of St. Louis in the first half of the 20th century. Nuderscher captured industrial scenes, streetscapes, and monuments of urban progress such as the Eads Bridge. Nuderscher painted structures without sharply defined outlines and his tonalistic style conveyed the smoky air, filtered sun, and misty haze of the industrial city.[8]

Sometime after 1910, Nuderscher discovered that his ability to paint the subtleties of the urban atmosphere lent itself to depicting the hazy air, fog, and light that was characteristic of the hills and valleys of the Ozark Mountains. His Ozark landscapes became his most characteristic work and were easily recognized by their peaceful serenity and by their muted, often pastel, colors. Nuderscher so loved painting in the Ozarks that he purchased a house in Arcadia, Missouri and moved his family there.[9] The Nuderscher family spent most of the 1920s in Arcadia, and Nuderscher even served as the village's mayor.[10]

While Nuderscher may have become better known as a painter of Ozark landscapes, he did not abandon his earlier urban themes. He continued to paint both urban St. Louis and the rural Arcadian Valley and saw no conflict in exhibiting them together.[11]

Nuderscher paintings are in the collections of the Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri History Museum, the Missouri Governor's Mansion, the National Park Service Museum of Westward Expansion, the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri, the St. Louis Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri - St. Louis, the Arkansas Arts Center, and the Saint Louis University Museum of Art.[12]

By the early 1920s, Nuderscher's reputation as a painter earned him high-profile mural projects such as the commission to paint a lunette in the Missouri State Capitol. He sketched a few different designs for the project before deciding on one of his favorite subjects, the Eads Bridge. Completed in 1922, The Artery of Trade (originally titled The Great Crossing) is a favorite of capitol visitors because of the optical illusion of the bridge moving as the viewer walks past.[13]

Nuderscher painted murals all over the United States including in New York City, Atlanta, and San Francisco. He remained in high demand as a muralist, particularly in Missouri, where he created works in banks, schools, museums, and in private place mansions. Notable commissions included murals in the Missouri Building at the 1939 New York World's Fair, the Missouri Pacific Museum, the Saint Louis Zoo, and St. Louis City Hospital.[14][15]

In 1955, one of Nuderscher's murals made national headlines with regard to the Civil Rights Movement. His mural, The Apotheosis of St. Louis, that adorned the St. Louis Board of Education assembly room had featured only white children. In light of the controversy of racial integration in St. Louis public schools, Nuderscher volunteered to repaint two of the children in the mural to be African-American and thus integrate the mural in a symbolic act.[16]