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June 23, 2025: Bettina Steinke
Howdy folks, it’s the fourth week of June 2025, and welcome to This Week in The West.
I’m Seth Spillman, broadcasting from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
On this podcast, we share stories of the people and events that shaped the history, art and culture of the American West—and those still shaping it today.
It was 1938, and the young woman was tucked into a tiny spot near the stage of NBC’s Studio 8H.
These days, we know the studio as the home of Saturday Night Live, but in the 1930s and 40s, it was the performance space for the NBC Orchestra and the wild performances of its popular conductor, Arturo Toscanini.
Sketching furiously in the corner, the woman, artist Bettina Steinke, tried to capture the energy, intensity and presence of the maestro in charcoal. That portrait, along with more than a hundred others she completed of the orchestra, would become part of a souvenir book and cement her reputation as one of the most talented portraitists in America.
Today we remember Steinke, who was born this week, June 25, 1913, one of the most important women in the history of Western art.
Born on June 25, 1913, in Biddeford, Maine, Bettina Louise Steinke was the daughter of famed cartoonist and entertainer William “Jolly Bill” Steinke.
Her father’s artistic background and entertainment career exposed her to both creativity and the colorful world of show business. After finishing high school in Bridgeport, Connecticut, she immersed herself in art studies at the Fawcett Art School, Cooper Union and the Phoenix Art School.
Steinke’s first big break came in 1937, when she assisted her father in creating a mural for NBC Radio’s 10th anniversary. That led directly to her own commission: murals for NBC’s Children’s Studio.
The murals impressed executives so much that NBC hired her as a resident artist. There, she sketched the network’s biggest stars at a time when radio dominated American culture. The portrait she created of Toscanini would eventually be shown in the National Portrait Gallery.
By 1939, she left NBC to become a freelance illustrator. During World War II, she created portraits of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, General Douglas MacArthur, and General Henry “Hap” Arnold. As a member of the Society of Illustrators, she participated in USO hospital tours, sketching wounded service members so their families back home could have a keepsake.
In 1946, Steinke married photojournalist Don Blair, and they traveled the world, eventually settling in the American Southwest.
In 1955, the couple settled in Taos, New Mexico, before moving to Santa Fe in 1970. There, they opened a gallery and home known as “The Compound,” which became both a creative hub and a base for Steinke’s most prolific years.
During this period, she mentored young artists, affectionately known as “Mother Blair,” and shifted her focus almost entirely to Western art and portraiture.
She created the portraits of Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea, which we have in our collection here at The Cowboy as part of the Hall of Great Western Performers.
Her connections to our museum run even deeper. One of her most celebrated paintings, Father and Daughter at the Crow Fair, won the Purchase Award at the 1978 Prix de West Invitational Art Exhibition & Sale. She was one of the founding members of the National Academy of Western Art, which partnered with The Cowboy to create the Prix de West.
We hosted a retrospective of Steinke’s work in 1995, where she was honored with a Prix de West Lifetime Achievement Award.
Another exhibition of her work was held at The Cowboy in 2012 and 2013. In 1996, she received the John Singer Sargent Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Society of Portrait Artists.
Steinke passed away in 1999. In accordance with her wishes, her ashes were scattered across the New Mexico landscape she had come to love so deeply.
We are celebrating the best contemporary Western art in 2025 with the 53rd edition of the Prix de West. The exhibition is on view through August 3. More information can be found at pdw.nationalcowboymuseum.org
And with that, we’ve conducted the final note on another episode of “This Week in The West.”
Our show is produced by Chase Spivey and written by Mike Koehler
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We leave you today with the words of Don Hedgpeth, author of a biography of Steinke:
“A Steinke portrait of a Western character is undeniable proof that “western art” can in fact be “fine art,” that a painting’s subject matter can appeal to our regional sensibilities and still exhibit a refined degree of artistic and technical accomplishment.”
Much obliged for listening, and remember, come Find Your West at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
