John E. Berninger

Who was John E. Berninger?

John Emil Berninger was an American landscape painter and Pennsylvania impressionist. He lived and painted in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the United States.

As an artist, Berninger has been described as being "in the outer ring of the New Hope School" and a member of "The Baum Circle," the group of artists either taught by, associated with, or directly influenced by Pennsylvania impressionist painter Walter Emerson Baum.

Berninger studied under Orlando Gray Wales and Arlington Nelson Lindenmuth, and was a student of Baum's first class in Allentown during the summer of 1926. In 1932, he became an art instructor at the Kline-Baum Art School. In 1934, he was one of four Baum students accepted into the Circulating Picture Club of the Philadelphia Art Alliance. In 1936, Berninger became the first curator of the Allentown Art Museum, and lived with his wife, Mabel, on the museum's second floor until 1956. Mabel Berninger assisted her husband in his role as curator at the museum, and also served as secretary for the Kline-Baum School's Circulating Picture Club, a "lending library" for art.