Elizabeth Heil Alke   (1877-1938)

Noted as a painter of landscapes, portraits and flowers, Elizabeth Heil was born August 3, 1877, near Columbus (Franklin), a daughter of Michael, a farmer, and his wife Margaret.  During the late 1890's and early 1900's, she studied intermittently at the Art Academy of Cincinnati (Hamilton), under Caroline Lord, Henrietta Wilson, Thomas S. Noble, and Otto Walter Beck.  She won awards at the 1898 and 1900 Ohio State Fairs for portraits and figures in oil, giving her home address as "Zimmer," a very small south-eastern suburb of Columbus, Ohio.  

During her student day, she crossed paths with her future husband, Stephen Alke, at least twice: one in 1900, when they were at the same Cincinnati boarding house, and again in 1905, when they both had studios at 2153 Fullerton Avenue, Cincinnati.  She worked in Akron (Summit) in 1909 and 1910, and then moved to Chicago, where she exhibited two pastel landscapes at the Art Institute in 1910.  She was in Seattle, Washington, from about 1913 to 1915, and soon afterwards she married Alke and settled with him in New Richmond (Clermont), beside the Ohio River.  A member of the Cincinnati Woman's Art Club and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, she died in New Richmond, April 8, 1938

Biography:  Haverstock, Mary Sayre.  Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900.  Kent State University Press, 2000

Submitted by Edward P. Bentley, researcher of Lansing, Michigan.