Hans Stoltenberg

(1879 Flensburg, Germany – 1963 West Bend, WI)

Hans Stoltenberg was born in Flensburg, Germany, but moved to Milwaukee with his widowed mother at the age of nine. As a young man, he worked at the Milwaukee painting and decorating firm, Brown and Harper, as a grainer, employing a paintbrush and comb to imitate marble and quarter-sawed oak on painted pine. In 1917, Stoltenberg moved to rural Wauwatosa and then later moved to Brookfield. There, he studied painting under Dudley Crafts Watson, former director of the Milwaukee Art Institute. Watson encouraged him to become a landscape painter, and thus he did. By 1920, Stoltenberg was a well-established artist and was teaching drawing classes.

Stoltenberg is most known for his rural landscapes, especially those of Kettle Moraine, Door County, and villages surrounding Madison including Black Earth and Mount Horeb.

SOURCES:

Museum of Wisconsin Art (MOWA) Archives: http://www.wisconsinart.org/archives/artist/hans-john-stoltenberg/profile-167.aspx