Louise Noack Gray

Louise Noack Gray (1909-2000) was an artist in California. Her favored medium was oil paint although she also worked in pastels and charcoal. Her work included both portraiture and landscapes. Stylistically, she favored impressionism.

Gray was born September 10, 1909 in Oakland, California to Walter Noack and Katherine Van Fossen at her grandparents' home. Her paternal great grandfather was a German immigrant who'd come to California during the Gold Rush. By the time she was born, one of his sons, her grandfather, owned a commercial furnishing shop in Oakland. Her maternal grandparents were descended from English and Dutch immigrants. Her mother was born on a wagon train along the Oregon-California border.

Although she was born in Oakland, Louise's parents lived in Stockton, California where her father was employed at the Holt Manufacturing Company which developed the caterpillar tractor. He went on to found his own business, Noack Pumps, makers of agricultural pumps. It was in Stockton where she met her husband, Ralph Nichols Gray, an artist who produced commercial signs and political cartoons for various newspapers. It was then that she became interested in becoming an artist herself.

The Grays had two children, but were divorced by the end of World War II. During the war, Louise worked as a welder at a shipyard at the Port of Stockton while her husband was serving in the U.S. Navy. Louise moved back to the Bay Area, eventually making her home in Berkeley, California. By the 1950s, she began working as a publicist at the Herrick Hospital in Berkeley. The steady income allowed her to improve her artistic skills. By the early 1960s, she was working as a publicist at the California College of Arts and Crafts and was beginning to sell a number of paintings. Many of these were commissioned portraits while others were sold through various galleries and art exhibits.

By the late 1960s, Louise Gray's income from painting allowed her to leave the College of Arts and Crafts and devote her full attention to her profession. Many of her paintings were purchased by banking and commercial firms, especially her landscapes. Many of these landscapes were based on some of her favorite childhood locales in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, especially in the vicinity of Bear Valley and Jamestown. Her portraits included many depicting her six grandchildren and even some of her great grandchildren.

Gray was the illustrator for "Emerging humanity; multi-ethnic literature for children and adolescents", by Ruth K. Carlson, published by W.C. Brown Co. (1972). Gray died in July 2000 at the age of 90, a few years after suffering a hip fracture from a fall.