Chris (Christian) Olson

The Gallery seeks paintings by Chris Olson. Contact: info@GalleryofWisconsinArt.com

BORN: 1905 in Oshkosh, WI
DIED: 2000 in Oshkosh, WI

Christian (Chris) Olson was born in rural Oshkosh and moved throughout his childhood to surrounding rural areas including Fremont, Weyauwega, Omro, and Berlin where his family was engaged in farming.

A self-taught artist with a natural drive to draw and paint, an uncle, who was an artist, provided Chris with oils and brushes during his grade school years. A Kiwanis Club award allowed him to study in Cedarburg with artist George Oberteuffer of the Chicago Art Institute. While this opportunity encouraged Chris to continue to pursue art as a career he had no success in selling his artwork locally and no other opportunity for further art training.

Subsequently he worked as a railroad section laborer, store clerk, and laborer in a flour mill to support himself while continuing to paint.

In the early 1930’s he and his father purchased a 40-acre farm in Omro, Wisconsin, where he worked summers at a nursery. In 1935, Olson took several of his paintings to Niles Behncke, the Director of the Oshkosh Public Museum who recommended him for the New Deal Arts Project. Olson produced many competent pieces of artwork over the next five years and was also able to study at Stillwater, Minnesota for three months.

In 1941, one year after the Federal Art Project ended, Olson purchased a small truck farm just north of Berlin, Wisconsin where the main cash crop was strawberries.

By 1948, Olson had artwork in the collections of the Oshkosh Museum, Oshkosh State Teacher’s College and many local school buildings, completing two series of paintings for the Oshkosh State Teacher’s College; one being a Wisconsin history series that depicts scenes from the Native-Americans through horse drawn streetcar days to present, the school also has his impressive mural of Wisconsin’s native songbirds.Olson’s oil paintings varied in style from Romanticism to Realism, using subject matter varying from history, still lifes and the rolling landscape scenes of rural Wisconsin, small town life and religious themes.

SOURCES AND BIOGRAPHICAL EXCERPTS:

Biographical writings by Chris Olson - Gallery of Wisconsin Art

Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.- 

AskART -