Oils, Watercolors, and Drawings by Homer E. Ellertson, December 12, 1936-January 15, 1937

Homer E. Ellertson was an American artist known for his watercolor landscape paintings. He was born in River Falls, Wisconsin in 1892 to Norwegian parents. His art education began during childhood and, after graduation from the local normal school, he studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. During his first year won a scholarship to study abroad in 1914. He went to Paris, France, where he continued his art training under Naudin, de la Cluse, and Richard Miller. He also traveled through Spain and returned to New York at the advent of World War I. In New York, he worked for five years at a Manhattan commercial establishment where he designed rugs, wallpapers, and textiles.

At the suggestion of a friend, Ellertson visited Tryon around 1920 and soon after settled there. In 1923, he designed and built a mansion he called El Taarn. Ellertson made at least two additional trips to Europe in 1922 and 1927. In 1928, he married Margaret Law of Tryon, a niece of the artist Margaret Moffett Law of Spartanburg. Ellertson lived and worked in an art colony in Tryon, North Carolina, alongside such artists as Lawrence Mazzanovich, George Aid, and Amelia Watson. He lived there the last fifteen years of his life and died there on his forty-third birthday in July 1935.

For many years, Ellertson was a member of the Southern States Art League and during that time his paintings were exhibited throughout the Southern U.S. In 1925, he won a medal in the Morse-American centennial. Notably, Duncan Phillips, founder of the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. purchased two of Ellertson’s oil paintings. They remain in the museum’s collection. In 1930, Ellertson held his first solo exhibition at the Art Center in New York where his work was positively received. In the following years he had an exhibition at the Delphic Studios in New York. After his death in 1935, his work was shown all over the U.S. in Charleston, South Caroline, Boston, Massachusetts, Rochester, New York, and San Francisco.

Sources:
Artist biography. Oils, Watercolors, and Drawings by Homer E. Ellertson, December 12, 1936-January 15, 1937, Legion of Honor Exhibition Records, LH-ER. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Archives.
https://thejohnsoncollection.org/homer-ellertson/