Shriner, Harry Gobble (“Pat”)

SHRINER, GOBBLE, REVINGTON, WAGNER, KEENE

Posted By: Jane Adams (email)
Date: 2/12/2005 at 18:19:21

MR. JOHN R. GOBBLE of Idaho Falls, Idaho, who is currently collecting material for a biography of his father’s cousin, HARRY G. SHRINER, artist son of GEORGE and MARGARET JANE (GOBBLE) SHRINER, contributes the following sketch, under date of 10 January 1965:

H. G. SHRINER.

HARRY GOBBLE (“PAT”) SHRINER was born 31 May 1871 in Fairfield, Jefferson County, Iowa, the third son (fourth child) of GEORGE SHRINER and his wife, the former MARGARET JANE GOBBLE. His mother was a daughter of THOMAS WILSON GOBBLE, a pioneer to Abingdon, Jefferson County, Iowa, in 1844 from Washington County, Virginia, where MARGARET JANE had been born in 1843.

GEORGE SHRINER was born in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, and came to Fairfield on 1 September 1848 when he was 26 years of age. He was a farmer, Sheriff (Democrat) in 1855, and operated grocery businesses, both retail and wholesale, in Fairfield from 1858 until 1886 when the family moved to Omaha.

While living in Omaha in 1889, young “PAT” received first honorable mention for crayon work at an Omaha Art Exhibition. In 1891 he went to Paris to study art, went to Ireland in 1894 and, in 1895, married an Irish girl by the name of HETTY JOSEPHINE REVINGTON. One daughter, EILEEN DOROTHY REVINGTON SHRINER was born in 1897 and, in 1964, was a retired employee of the Bank of England and resided in suburban London.

The family came from Ireland to Fairfield, he in 1899, and the wife and daughter in 1900. “PAT,” by then was a very accomplished artist, both of landscapes and portraits of humans and horses. He taught art classes at Parsons College during the school years 1899-1901. He exhibited 14 paintings at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904.

In 1905 he and his wife separated, she returning to Ireland with the daughter, and he never saw them again. For the next few years he painted in Oskaloosa, Denver, Cheyenne and Los Angeles.

He divorced HETTY in Denver (she not present) in February 1908, and in April married a Los Angeles divorcee, STELLA ENONE (WAGNER) KEENE. They moved to La Jolla, California, in the fall of 1910 where they lived until their deaths, he in December 1941 and she in June 1942.

He painted the last portrait of JOHN BURROUGHS, the great naturalist, which has a prominent place in the Balboa Museum in San Diego. Many portraits of Fairfield people, treasured possessions of their descendants, were painted by SHRINER. Among them are portraits of MR. and MRS T. W. GOBBLE (his grandparents). Other portraits by SHRINER hang in the Fairfield Public Library, the Jefferson County Court House, etc.

In his later years he specialized in early morning and late evening scenes of the California and Arizona deserts he loved. He was an independent and rugged individualist. He would pack up his materials and leave if anyone attempted to watch him paint, would have nothing whatever to do with other artists, and he rarely (never in later life) held a “show” or exhibition of his work.

See:
Fairfield Ledger-Journal, Jan. 6, 1922
http://iagenweb.org/boards/jefferson/documents/index.cgi?rev=326114 -- "When Shriner Painted Here."

Fairfield Ledger, Dec. 10, 1927
http://iagenweb.org/boards/jefferson/documents/index.cgi?rev=326123 -- "The Log Cabin Fire Place." (Shriner’s Studio.)

This data has been transcribed for genealogical purposes; I am not related to the subject.