Betty M. Bowes | Artist, 96

Betty Miller Bowes, 96, of Wynnewood, an award-winning artist, died Wednesday at home.

Mrs. Bowes won more than a dozen prizes from the American Watercolor Society in New York. In 1995 she received an "Achievement in the Arts" award from the Philadelphia Watercolor Club. Her paintings are in the collections of several institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

In 1983, an Inquirer art critic reviewed Mrs. Bowes' work at an exhibit at Newman & Saunders Galleries in Wayne, and wrote that the Roman and Florentine landscapes and flower paintings are "breezy, graceful, and adept, with a certain amount of striving for painterly lushness."

Mrs. Bowes graduated from Germantown High School, and was awarded a scholarship to Moore College of Art and Design. After graduation, she studied abroad on a fellowship and fell in love with classical ruins, said Drew Saunders, co-owner of Newman & Saunders Galleries and a friend.

For more than 10 years, Mrs. Bowes was a fashion illustrator for department store print ads and also illustrated covers for Reader's Digest. She had incredible drawing skills, Saunders said, though she later became known for her semi-abstract work.

In 1946 she married Thomas Bowes, a Sun Oil Co. executive. With his support, she concentrated on fine art, painting scenes on the Delaware when he went sailing, and scenes of Greek and Roman antiquities when they traveled.

Mrs. Bowes has no immediate survivors. Her husband died in 1980.

A graveside service will be at 10 a.m. Monday at Calvary Cemetery in West Conshohocken. Memorial donations may be made to the Francisvale Home for Smaller Animals, 328 Upper Gulph Rd., Radnor, Pa. 19087.