Charles Francis Quest grew up in St. Louis, his talent evident as a teenager when he began copying the works of masters such as Michelangelo on his bedroom walls. He studied at the Washington University School of Fine Arts, where he later taught from 1944 to 1971. He traveled to Europe after graduating in 1929 and studied at La Grande Chaumière and Academie Colarossi, Paris. After returning to St. Louis, Quest received several commissions to paint murals in public buildings, schools, and churches, including one from Joseph Cardinal Ritter to paint a replica of Velasquez's Crucifixion over the main altar of the Old Cathedral in St. Louis.

Quest became interested in the woodcut medium, which he learned through his study of J. J. Lankes' A Woodcut Manual (1932) and Paul Landacre's articles in American Artist magazine “since no artists in St. Louis were working in wood” at that time. Quest also revealed that for him, wood cutting and engraving were “more enjoyable than any other means of expression.” In the late 1940s, his graphic works began attracting critical attention—several of his woodcuts won prizes and were acquired by major American and European museums. His wood engraving entitled ‘Lovers’ was included in the American Federation of Art's traveling print exhibition in 1947. Two years later, Quest's two prize-winning prints, ‘Still Life with Grindstone’ and ‘Break Forth into Singing’ were exhibited in major American museums in a traveling show organized by the Philadelphia Print Club. His work was also included in the Chicago Art Institute's exhibition, ‘Woodcut Through Six Centuries’, and his print ‘Still Life with Vise’, was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 

In 1951 he was invited by artist-curator Jacob Kainen to exhibit thirty wood engravings and color woodcuts in the Graphic Arts Division of the Smithsonian's National Museum (now the American History Museum). This one-man exhibition was a remarkable achievement for Quest, who had worked in the medium for only about ten years. In the press release for the show, Kainen praised the ‘technical refinement’  of Quest's work: ‘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.’

At the time of the Smithsonian exhibition, Quest's work was represented by three New York galleries and one in his hometown. He had garnered 38 awards, and his prints were in the collections of the Library of Congress, Chicago Art Institute, Metropolitan Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In cooperation with the Art in Embassies program, his color woodcuts were displayed at the American Embassy in Paris in 1951. Recognition at home came in 1955 with his first solo exhibition in St. Louis. Press coverage of the show heralded the ‘growth of graphic arts toward rivaling painting and sculpture as a major independent medium.’ 

Quest retired from teaching in 1971, making relatively few prints in his later years, as the rigors of the medium were too demanding. He moved to Tryon, North Carolina, with his wife Dorothy, an artist and portrait painter, and remained active as a painter until his death in 1993. An exhibition of his prints at the Bethesda Art Gallery in 1983 attracted the interest of Curator Emeritus Joseph A. Haller, S.J., who began purchasing his work for the University's collection.

In 1990 Georgetown University Library's Special Collections Division became the grateful recipient of a large body of Quest's work, including prints, drawings, paintings, sculpture, and stained glass, as well as his archive of correspondence and professional memorabilia. These extensive holdings, including 260 of his fine prints, provide a rich opportunity to further study and appreciate this versatile and highly accomplished mid-Western American artist of the twentieth century.

— Edited from the introduction by LuLen Walker, Art Collection Curator, to the exhibition ‘Charles Quest: Visions in copper and Wood’, Georgetown University Library, 2002.