Alexander Jargo

Seeking quality artwork and photo of Alexander Norman Jargo. contact us: info@GalleryofWisconsinArt.com

BORN: 1874

DIED:1949

After an unhappy childhood, being pushed from home to home among his relatives in North Dakota and Wisconsin, Alexander Norman Jargo got his first chance to pursue art at the age of seventeen. Henry Stevens, a local crayon artist, gave him a few lessons in crayon. After seeing his progression, Stevens offered to take him to Minneapolis for formal training. Unfortunately, his grandfather, whom he was staying with refused to let him go and Jargo remained as a farm hand.

At the age of twenty-four, Jargo married and, after an accident on the farm, took up blacksmithing. Up until his death, he worked as a smithy on the weekdays and on Sundays, he finally had time to work in his artist studio in the barn.

Jargo favored oil paints and making images of people including of his wife and himself.

Source: Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/80575168/alexander-norman-jargo

John Rector Barton, “Sunday Painter”, Rural Artists of Wisconsin (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1948), 63-66.

Photo credit: Photo credit: John Rector Barton, Rural Artists of Wisconsin (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1948), 63.