The modern painter Irma René Koen (neé Irma Julia Kohn) was born in Rock Island, IL (b. October 8, 1883-d. July 16, 1975). She studied at the Art Institute of Chicago with prominent landscape painter Charles Francis Browne (1859-1920) and with leading Danish-American portraitist John Christen Johansen (1876–1964).

While residing in Rock Island or Chicago, Koen also spent summers painting in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Maine, most notably with the New Hope Circle Impressionists including William Langson Lathrop (1859-1938) and the eminent teacher Henry Bayley Snell (1858-1943) at the Boothbay Harbor summer art colony in Maine. Koen painted in Illinois, and briefly in California and New Mexico, as well as along the East Coast, and abroad in England (St. Ives, Cornwall, art colony), France, Africa, Asia, and Spain, among other locales.

She established her painting studios in Rock Island, Chicago, East Gloucester, Rockport, Paris, and Cuernavaca. Irma’s talents and interests extended beyond painting over the course of her lifetime. In her youth, she danced in theatrical benefits and was an accomplished cellist. She taught art and served as an art juror and on various civic committees, fostering the local art community and the emerging modern art movement in the Midwest.

A world traveler, Irma was also a writer and lecturer, speaking on her travels, trends in art and flower arranging. After moving to Mexico permanently in 1944, Irma continued painting and traveling. She exhibited her vivid plein-air paintings, watercolors, and gouache scenes for nearly 70 years, including galleries and museums in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC, and in Paris and throughout Mexico.

The https://irmarenekoen.wordpress.com website is devoted to Koen’s remarkable life and art.