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Old Masters, 19th and Twentieth Century Art

Arthur FitzSimmons

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Arthur J. FitzSimmons lived in Missouri, Arizona and California. He is known for figure and desert landscape painting.

From a prominent St. Louis family, FitzSimmons was sent west in his early teens because of meningitis. He spent three years in Arizona, and by the time he returned, he was in better health and knew he wanted to paint the west for a living. He studied art at Washington University in St. Louis, and later taught art at St. Louis University. He became a successful commercial artist and illustrator, but he wasn't happy. He moved his family to a farm near Cedar Hill, Missouri in the 1950s "to sink or swim on what I wanted to do.”