I am very proud to be related to this amazing woman. "Fannie" Faig is my 4th cousin on my mother's side. I own around ten of her paintings. I have a guest bedroom in my home dedicated to her. Here is some information about her life and art!

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Frances Wiley Faig was a respected regional painter and muralist active in Cincinnati during the early twentieth century, especially in the 1910s–1930s. Although she is not as widely known nationally today as some of her contemporaries, she occupied an important place within Cincinnati’s vibrant art culture during that era.

A few key things stand out about her life and work:

• She studied with Frank Duveneck at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and also studied with Charles Hawthorne in Provincetown. That lineage is significant because Duveneck’s students shaped much of Cincinnati’s artistic identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 
• Faig was deeply connected to Cincinnati’s arts organizations. She belonged to the Cincinnati MacDowell Society, the Cincinnati Women’s Art Club, the Cincinnati Society of Professional Artists, and the Southern States Art League. 
• In the 1920s and early 1930s she became especially known for mural commissions and civic artwork around Cincinnati. She painted:
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  • murals of the Miami and Erie Canal for Hartwell High School,
  • murals in Western Hills High School depicting transportation and Cincinnati history,
  • murals for the Woman’s City Club,
  • and earlier engineering-themed murals for the University of Cincinnati Engineering Library. 
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  •                           UC Engineering Library murals created by Frances Wiley Faig
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• Her work often centered on regional landscapes and Cincinnati scenes. One notable painting, Hills of Home (1929), depicts Kentucky hills viewed through Cincinnati’s Eden Park and remains in the University of Cincinnati collection. 

Stylistically, she seems to sit between American Impressionism and a more decorative regional realism. Some surviving works — especially landscapes and Provincetown scenes — show loose brushwork, atmospheric color, and an interest in light that reflects both the Duveneck tradition and the influence of Provincetown painting circles. 

What makes her especially interesting historically is that she represents a generation of professional women artists who sustained important regional art communities before Abstract Expressionism and postwar modernism shifted attention almost entirely to New York. Cincinnati actually had a remarkably strong network of women painters, muralists, and arts organizers in the early 20th century, and Faig was part of that ecosystem. Her career overlaps with broader conversations about women artists working in civic and institutional settings long before women received equal recognition in the art world.

Her husband, John T. Faig, was an engineering educator and later president of the Ohio Mechanics Institute, which likely helped connect her to several of the university and civic mural commissions. 

There is surprisingly little scholarship on her today, but her surviving murals and paintings suggest she was highly regarded locally during her lifetime. Much of what survives about her reputation comes through university archives, regional galleries, and Cincinnati historical collections rather than major national museum histories.

Given your own interest in abstract and modern art history — especially women artists and regional movements — you might find Faig fascinating as part of the overlooked bridge between American Impressionism, civic mural painting, and the later emergence of modernist women artists in the Midwest.

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July 2026- Frances Whiley Faig's murals are being restored!   To read about the University of Cincinnati mural restoration project follow this link:  https://libapps.libraries.uc.edu/source/ceas-librarys-historic-murals-engineering-a-restoration/