American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection | Page 40

George Overbury “Pop” Hart (American, 1868–1933) Canal Scene, n.d. Color monotype, 10 1/2 x 13 3/4 in. Chazen Museum of Art, gift of D. Frederick Baker from the Baker/Pisano Collection, 2014.6.9 Born in Cairo, Illinois, and raised in Rochester, New York, Hart left home for Chicago in 1892. He began his career producing campaign portraits for James G. Blaine and later painting signs for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. Hart studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1894 to 1897, before embarking on various trips abroad including visits to Egypt (1900), Cuba and Central America (1900–1903), and the South Seas (1903–1904). During the summer of 1907, Hart studied at the Académie Julian in Paris, and spent time in Oise, Meulan, and Étaples before returning to the United States later that year. During the 1910s and 1920s, Hart became involved with a number of artists’ organizations, notably the New York-based Whitney Studio Club and the Penguin Club whose members included Joseph Stella and Edward Hopper. Through his contact with different artists and artistic organizations, Hart put aside his watercolors and oils to take up printmaking in the early 1920s. Although he would use New York as his “base” camp, Hart, always the peripatetic wanderer, continued to travel, and often did so with a merry band of ragtag artists–Bohemian esprits libres. His friends called him “Pops” after he grew a beard; the name stuck. 36 T H E E X H I B I T IO N NOTES: Gilbert, George Overbury “Pop” Hart, 13–28, 63–66, 121–122. Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Handbook of the Collections, 60. Moser, Singular Impressions, 74–75.