Description:

Augusta Oelschig (GA, 1918 - 2000), Hat Sale, Watercolor, signed A. Oelshig lower left, depicting men picking hats at a hat sale, matted and framed. Frame size: 18 1/2 in. x 21 3/4 in.

Savannah native Augusta Oelschig is known as a painter of the American Scene, politically-charged commentaries, and, later, highly personal experiments in abstraction. Her lengthy career spanned the time from her entrance to college through the late 1970s, when declining health slowed her production. As a young girl, Oelschig benefitted from the Savannah public schools’ strong art curriculum pioneered by Lila Cabaniss and then took private lessons with highly regarded painter Emma Wilkins. Following two years at a local junior college, in 1937 she transferred to the University of Georgia whose art department was directed by the renowned instructor Lamar Dodd. Dodd would become a great advocate of Oelschig’s work and prophesied her future success in the catalogue to her first solo museum exhibition held in 1941 at Savannah’s Telfair Academy. After graduation, Oelschig returned to Savannah, where she studied with Henry Lee McFee and earned particular acclaim for paintings depicting contemporary African American life. In 1948 Oelschig moved to New York where she stayed for fourteen years, painting and exhibiting work in the realist style, despite the widespread popularity of abstraction in the city at that time. After her return to Savannah in 1962, she offered private art instruction and experimented with abstraction, but primarily continued to produce the American Scene images for which she is best known. A review of a career-spanning exhibition of Oelschig’s work that opened just weeks after the artist’s death described her aesthetic as having “a distinctive style that is both steeped in the Southern Gothic tradition and remarkably unique.” (The Johnson Collection)

Measurements: Height: 10 3/4 in. x Width: 14 3/8 in.

Condition:

Overall fair condition, toning and foxing, heavy foxing to mat, mat burn, not viewed out of frame. Wear to frame.

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