American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection | Page 51

George Demont Otis (American, 1879–1962)
Landscape, ca. 1915

Color monotype, 4 7/8 x 3 13/16 in.
Chazen Museum of Art, gift of D. Frederick Baker from the
Baker/Pisano Collection, 2014.6.11

Otis was a Tennessee-born artist who lists among his teachers
William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. He had an early
career as a baseball pitcher, but ended it a few years later to
pursue art fulltime. Otis first studied at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago around 1894, and may have met Chase
there who was a visiting professor from 1897 to 1898. Throughout the years, Otis also studied at the Pennsylvania Academy
of Fine Arts, Cooper Union, the National Academy of Design,
and other institutions. Otis made several trips to California
and, in 1914, claimed responsibility for inviting Chase to teach
a summer class at Carmel-by-the Sea, California. During the
summer Chase completed several monotypes, no doubt inspiring his students, including Otis, to join him in this pursuit.
NOTES:
Annex Galleries, Fifty Years of California Prints, Fourth Annual Exhibition,
unpaginated.
Moser, Singular Impressions, 109–111.

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