Florence Elizabeth Riefle Bahr (February 2, 1909 – January 12, 1998) was an American artist and activist. She made portraits of children and adults, including studies of nature as she found it. Instead of using a camera, more than 300 pen and ink sketchbooks catalog insights into her life, including her civil and human rights activism of the 1960s and 1970s. One of the many important captured events included the Washington D.C. event where Martin Luther King Jr. first gave his I Have a Dream speech. Her painting Homage to Martin Luther King hangs in the (NAACP) National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's headquarters. She created illustrations for children's books and painted a mural in the Works Progress Administration (WPA) for the Johns Hopkins Hospital's Harriet Lane Home for Children. Her works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions since the 1930s. In 1999, she was posthumously awarded to the State of Maryland's Women's Hall of Fame, as the first woman artist they recognized.
Personal life
Florence Riefle was born in Baltimore, Maryland to parents James Henry Riefle and Florence Riefle. She was the only artist in a musically talented family. Bahr grew up later in Homeland, but first in Forest Park, Maryland and graduated from Forest Park High School.
She met Leonard Marion Bahr, a portrait painter, who was her teacher at the Maryland Institute in 1930. She sometimes modeled for his portrait studies. In 1934, the couple married and subsequently, over the course of a decade, had three children: Beth, Leonard Jr., and Mary
The newly married Bahr couple first lived in Baltimore City in a studio apartment on a third floor. In an article about her, Florence said that she was mostly interested in her husband and painting; that they both "would rather paint than eat." She also mentioned a few shared recreational interests: horseback riding, hiking and swimming.
By 1940, Florence and Leonard were gaining recognition for their art, exhibitions and teaching abilities in Baltimore. During World War II, Leonard joined the Navy March 1, 1943, as a naval officer and was released on December 23, 1945. In 1947, the couple moved to an historic home on Old Lawyers Hill Road, an historic hilltop district in Elkridge, Howard County, Maryland and in the 1960s, Leonard had a newer house built on the same property, with each their own studios attached.
Florence Bahr died in a house fire, which resulting water damage destroyed a few, but not all, of her sketches. She suffered a tragic and needless local contractor-related death.
Civil rights
Concerned about civil and human rights, Florence became involved in these human rights causes—like children's welfare - as in the Black Panther breakfast programs for inner-city children; women's rights; and anti-war and anti-nuclear issues, as well as stopping African apartheid. She championed various activists like the Berrigan brothers, Albert Schweitzer, Tom Dooley, and anyone who stood up for the poor. She campaigned for public officials' attention on the issues that concerned her via telephone calls and letter-writing campaigns; participated in political marches, civil rights demonstrations, and attended trials. She was arrested at a big May Day anti-war demonstration at The Pentagon.
Bahr also sketched important events that she witnessed, like the trials of former Governor Marvin Mandel and the Catonsville Nine. She also had important images of key national and state marches and demonstrations. From many of these and other events, she donated more than 300 sketchbooks to the Maryland State Archives.
Education
In 1927 she attended Dickinson College. The next year she enrolled in the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and took an aggressive course schedule to earn a Costume Design diploma in 1930. The following year she earned the James Young Memorial Prize Award and a diploma in Fine Arts.
She enrolled in 1959 at the Catonsville Community College to study German and Biology. In 1962 received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting at MICA and in 1967 she received a Master of Fine Arts in Education and Printmaking.