Faye Swengel Badura, Photograph by Jack Rosen, James A. Michener Art Museum

Faye Swengel Badura was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1904. In 1923 she studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with Arthur B. Carles, Daniel Garber and George Oberteuffer. Swengel won the Cresson Fellowship in 1925, allowing her to travel and study in Europe. She met fellow Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts student, Ben Badura, and married him in 1928. They moved to Bucks County in 1930, settling permanently in New Hope in 1937. Here she became involved in the local art scene, carrying out many portrait commissions, and painting restoration work and locally inspired landscapes. Fellow New Hope Modernist, Ralston Crawford, in the 1930s, referred to Swengel as one of the best woman artists in America at the time. She actively exhibited her work through the 1930s and 1940s. Faye Swengel Badura died in 1991.