Charles Francis Quest produced sculpture, paintings, stained glass, and murals, but prints were his true passion. His talents were recognized by Jacob Kainen, curator of graphic arts at the Smithsonian Institution who noted: “He obtains a great variety of textural effects through the use of the graver, and these dense or transparent grays are set off against whites or blacks to achieve sparkling results. His work has the handsome qualities characteristic of the craftsman and designer.”
Quest was born in Troy in upstate New York, but spent his childhood in the Midwest: at age six he was in Cleveland, Ohio, and by age ten in St. Louis, Missouri. As a youth he was so eager to be an artist he copied old master paintings on his bedroom walls. He studied painting and sculpture for five years at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts at Washington University (now the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts), earning both his Bachelor and Master of Fine Arts degrees.
When he was twenty-five, in 1929, Quest married Dorothy Johnson, also a painter, and together they went to Europe. In Paris he took classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and Académie Colarossi. After the stock market crash the pair returned to the States and spent some time in New York. Subsequently they took up residence once again in St. Louis where Quest studied with Emil Frei, a noted designer of stained glass. Simultaneously, he taught art in the public schools through 1944, when he took a position at his alma mater, Washington University. He remained there for twenty-seven years until his retirement in 1971.
Along the way, Quest painted but also became a passionate printmaker. A lithograph, By the Road was exhibited at New York’s 1939 World’s Fair. He explained that for him printmaking was “more enjoyable than any other means of expression.” His work was included in an exhibition organized by the United States Information Service, 20th Century American Artists, which traveled internationally. Closer to home he accepted several mural projects for two schools and two Episcopal churches, and the local library. His most ambitious undertaking was a fourteen foot replica of Diego Velasquez’s famous painting Christ Crucified for the Basilica of Saint Louis, King of France, the first cathedral west of the Mississippi. For this endeavor he traveled to Madrid in 1960 to view the original at The Prado Museum.
Following his retirement in 1971, the Quests moved to Tryon, North Carolina, to join an artist colony that decades earlier had attracted such artists as George Aid, Lawrence Mazzanovich, Homer Ellertson, and Amelia Watson. Because of the physical demands of printmaking, Quest made fewer prints during this period, preferring to paint instead. He and his wife remained steadfast in their dedication to the arts, painting until their respective deaths.