Wenonah Bell

Wenonah Day Bell (1890–1981) was an American painter.

Bell was a native of Trenton, South Carolina, and was the daughter of a Baptist minister. Later she moved to Greenville, Georgia. Her artistic training began at Brenau College. She followed this with studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, at which institution she won the Cresson Traveling Scholarship and the Second Toppan Prize; in 1926 she received the Mary Smith Prize. She had lessons at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, the Hans Hoffmann School of Fine Arts in Munich, and at Teachers College, Columbia University, and she also studied in Capri during her career. Bell taught art for a time at Bergen College, and for nearly thirty years lived in New York City, where she was on the faculty of the Parsons School of Design. Periodically throughout her life, she would return to the South to sketch, paint, and find artistic inspiration. She also penned a memoir, The Restless Bells, documenting her family's history from Reconstruction through World War II. The book was published in 1973.

Bell's style was based on that of the Impressionists, but was informed by certain modernist sensibilities as well. She was known for her depictions both of the rural life of the southern United States and of the New York urban scene; she also produced portraits and still lifes, and worked in both oils and watercolor. A Table Top Still Life of c. 1930, in oil on canvas, is in the collection of the Morris Museum of Art. Another oil, Peach Packing, Spartanburg County of 1938, is owned by the Johnson Collection of art of the southern United States. Bell is also represented in the collection of the Vanderpoel Memorial Art Gallery in Chicago.