Biography from the Archives of AskART:

The following biography was contributed by Peter Kolb Danner, the son of the artist:

Sara Kolb Danner experimented with a variety of media, producing watercolors, ink drawings, and steel engravings, as well as oils. Her work was heavily influenced by the French Impressionists (her favorite artist was Cezanne), although she adopted a more lacquered look in her later years. She was also a poet, as well as a painter. Her poetry was regularly published in "The Saturday Review," and a book combining both paintings and poetry called "Gallery Tour" was published by Stanford University Press in 1952.

Danner was born October 2, 1894 in New York City (Morrisania, now part of The Bronx). Her birth name was Sarah Ethel Kolb, but she always spelled her first name Sara, since, as she once remarked, "With the 'ah' it looked too much like Sahara Desert.

"Sara inherited her interest in art from her father. The only one of seven brothers not to enter the baking business, Emanuel (Mannie) had won a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and studied with Thomas Eakins (clearly before 1886 when Eakins resigned). Emanuel spent several years working for a lithography firm before becoming successful in real estate. He abandoned art completely after his marriage (1892) on the urging of his Victorian wife, who considered the practice of art bohemian.

The sale of the Kolb Bakery to the General Baking Company in 1913 made the family relatively wealthy, allowing Mannie to build a large house on Gowen Avenue in the suburb of Mount Airy.

With the encouragement of her father, Sara Kolb entered the Philadelphia School of Design in 1912, where she was a pupil of Henry Bayley Snell and also enrolled in the summer program at the Pennsylvania School of the Fine Arts. When Clarence Hinkle moved to Santa Barbara in 1935, they became close friends, Hinkle serving as a mentor for the rest of Sara's life. Her first one-woman show in Santa Barbara was held in 1928. A son, Peter, was born in 1936.A one-woman show in Santa Barbara in 1942 was held over an extra month due to its popularity. The same year a painting called "Eucalyptus" won first prize at the annual show of the Women Painters of the West. In 1943 her painting "Second Grade" took best of show honors at the largest WPW show held to that time (at the Los Angeles Museum).

 The Danners divided their time from 1934 and 1943 between Santa Barbara and Palo Alto. My mother was extremely active during the war years, painting, arranging one-man shows, and winning prizes. Sara Kolb Danner remarried in 1956, becoming Mrs. Edward Logan Campbell. She continued to paint until just before her death in Santa Barbara on January 5, 1969...