Olaf C. Seltzer (August 27, 1877 - December 16, 1957) was a Danish-born American painter and illustrator from Great Falls, Montana. He did over 2,500 paintings and illustrations of the American West, including cowboys.

Early life

Seltzer was born on August 27, 1877 in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

, Denmark. He emigrated to the United States with his mother after his father died, and settled in Great Falls, where his uncle lived. He did not speak English when he arrived.

Career

Seltzer worked as a machinist for the

Great Northern Railway (U.S.) The Great Northern Railway was an American Class I railroad. Running from Saint Paul, Minnesota, to Seattle, Washington, it was the creation of 19th-century railroad entrepreneur James J. Hill and was developed from the Saint Paul & Pacific ...

. In 1897, he began painting alongside Charles M. Russell. Seltzer decided to paint independently from 1921 onward. He worked as an illustrator for '' The New York Tribune'' in 1934, and he exhibited his work in Seattle in 1936. He did 275 paintings for physician Philip G. Cole. He did over 2,500 paintings and illustrations over the course of his career. Seltzer did both

watercolor Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to ...

and

oil painting Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...

s, and he depicted life in the American West, including animals, cowboys and historical events. He also painted pioneers like Meriwether Lewis and

William Clark William Clark (August 1, 1770 – September 1, 1838) was an American explorer, soldier, Indian agent, and territorial governor. A native of Virginia, he grew up in pre-statehood Kentucky before later settling in what became the state of Miss ...

. Seltzer did a painting for the Grand Masonic Library in Helena. President

Harry Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...

received one of his paintings as a gift on his 1950 visit to Montana. His work was exhibited at the

Gilcrease Museum Gilcrease Museum, also known as the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, is a museum northwest of downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma housing the world's largest, most comprehensive collection of art of the American West, as well as a gro ...

in Oklahoma in 1957.

Personal life, death and legacy

Seltzer married Mabel L. Cleeland in 1903. They had two sons, Carl and Walter, and they resided in Great Falls. Seltzer died on December 16, 1957 in Great Falls, Montana. Some of his work is in the permanent collection of the

C. M. Russell Museum Complex C. M. Russell Museum Complex is an art museum located in the city of Great Falls, Montana, in the United States. The museum's primary function is to display the artwork of Great Falls "cowboy artist" Charles Marion Russell, for whom the museum ...

in Great Falls, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Gilcrease Museum in Oklahoma, and the

Tacoma Art Museum The Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) is an art museum in Tacoma, Washington, United States. It focuses primarily on the art and artists from the Pacific Northwest and broader western region of the U.S. Founded in 1935, the museum has strong roots in the c ...

Tacoma, Washington Tacoma ( ) is the county seat of Pierce County, Washington, United States. A port city, it is situated along Washington's Puget Sound, southwest of Seattle, northeast of the state capital, Olympia, and northwest of Mount Rainier National Pa ...

. His papers are at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washingt ...

. His grandson, Steve Seltzer, is a painter.

Works

References

External links

Olaf Carl Seltzer
on the

American Art Collaborative The American Art Collaborative (AAC) is a consortium of 14 art museums in the United States, whose mission is the establishment of "a critical mass of linked open data (LOD) on the semantic web." Membership As of 2018, the 14 members were: * Amo ...

Olaf Carl Seltzer
on Find a Grave {{DEFAULTSORT:Seltzer, Olaf C. 1877 births 1957 deaths Danish emigrants to the United States People from Great Falls, Montana 20th-century American painters American male painters American magazine illustrators Artists from Montana Artists of the American West 20th-century American male artists