Renowned Artist
Young Louise
Louise Marie Woodroofe, born on January 28,1892, showed interest in art and drawing from an early age.
As a small child she made detailed sketches of her home and scenes from her daily life.
Student and Teacher
Woodroofe attended Champaign High School, located at Randolph and Hill Streets in Champaign. As an illustrator and designer, she worked on the first three editions of the Maroon, still the yearbook of Champaign Central High School.
She graduated in 1912 and later would go on to college, but not before being formally introduced to Champaign society at a traditional afternoon reception. The event was held by her grandmother at their Hill Street home and was attended by three to four hundred people.
While Louise studied Fine Arts at the University of Illinois, she was a member of the lota sorority, and her drawings appeared in editions of the Illio. She soon moved to Syracuse University in New York, graduating with a Degree in Painting from the College of Fine Arts in 1919. In the following years she developed her style in the Fauvist tradition.
After college, Louise was hired by the University of Illinois to teach drawing to the architecture students. When she first returned to Champaign, she moved back in with her grandmother in the house on West Hill Street, and eventually moved to her own apartment at 709 West Nevada Street in Urbana. By 1928, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture, and in 1948 she was appointed a Full Professor of Art.
Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus
In the mid-1920s, Louise began spending her summers traveling with the Ringling Brothers Circus and painting circus life. She would continue traveling with them for the next decade. After that, she was a frequent visitor at the bequest of the circus management. A particular focus of her work was portraits of clowns.
Later Life
Louise lived a long and productive life. She continued to develop her innovative art and by the end of her life was an abstract modernist. Secure in her finances, she never needed to sell her work and instead passed pieces to her friends and family. When she died in 1996 at the age 104, her apartment was filled with her works and circus memorabilia.