George Edgar Ohr: "The Mad Potter"

George Edgar Ohr (1857-1918) may not be well known internationally, but his artistic production was prolific to say the least. Proud to hold the moniker “Mad Potter of Biloxi” Ohr was always convinced that he would eventually be recognized as a genius, even if it occurred after his death. For the past few years, work was being done on a new museum in his honor to showcase his prodigious oeuvre.

Ohr was born in Mississippi and moved to New Orleans in 1850 where he first experimented in ceramics. He studied under the potter Joseph Fortune Meyer and in the 1880s, traveled all over the states to acquaint himself with the work and interest of other potters. Upon returning to Biloxi in 1883, Ohr built a pottery shop next to his father’s house in hopes of earning a living creating art, not pots. “Pot-Ohr-E” was unsuccessful to say the least. Employing local, red clay from the banks of the Tchoutacabouffa River, Ohr’s creations ranged from ordinary pitchers and planters to his pride and joy, “mud babies”. These were pieces formed into fantastic shapes and glazed with vibrant colors. Although his craftsmanship was remarkable and unmatched by any other potter, Ohr’s style was unappreciated by other artists of the time, lacking the classical style that was popular. Many were interested in his work, but because Ohr refused to sell his pieces for less than what they were worth in gold, his shop faired poorly. The world was not yet worthy for the eccentric and contemporary works of George Edgar Ohr.

After a fire left his pottery shop in ruins, Ohr vigorously labored to complete thousands of pieces, most between the years 1895 and 1905. His created numerous pots, pitchers and vases, all of which mirrored his eccentricity. They were outrageous and amazing, and consisted of wild hues and colors. Their shapes and design were anything but symmetrical and often had a crumpled-bag look to them. Even the handles for his vases and pitchers were unusual. He showcased them at fairs and exhibitions, employing unconventional and wacky advertisements to lure customers, boasting “no two alike”.

As much time and effort Ohr placed on advertising, he hated selling his pieces. Often not wanting to depart from his most beloved works, he would put extravagant prices on them in hopes of deterring any sale. In the rare occasion when a customer did purchase one of his ceramics, he would go to extremes to retrieve the item back, even chasing them down the street, their money in hand. In 1909, at the age of 52, after not selling a “mud baby” for nearly 25 years, Ohr closed his shop and never threw another pot. He spent the rest of his life in madness until he died at the age of 60 of throat cancer.

His “mad” creations and goofy portraits characterize him today as the Salvador Dali of pottery. A self-proclaimed oddball, he thrived on imperfection and often patronized the art world by deliberately distorting his perfectly made objects. Locals thought him insane, while artists of the time simply misunderstood him. He described his work as "unequaled, undisputed, unrivaled”. By the 1950s, a school of Abstract Expressionism ceramics had been born and artists began to take notice of Ohr’s work. Today, his abstract pieces are highly coveted and his work sells for thousands. The world finally accepted Ohr as the great potter he always knew he was.

William Woodward’s “Biloxi Art Pottery,” 1890s. Oil painting. Collection of the Biloxi Public Library.

Researched and written Shanna Seiberlich.

MIR Appraisal Services, Inc.
Principal Appraiser: Farhad Radfar, ISA AM
307 N. Michigan Avenue, Suite 308
Chicago, IL 60601
(312) 814-8510

MIR Appraisal Services, Inc., is located just steps from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Cultural Center; please do give us a ring to set up an appointment for a verbal evaluation of your most prized works of art.

George Catlin

As we prepare for Thanksgiving, MIR would like to highlight an influential artist whose depictions of the Old West and portraits of Native Americans remind us of the origins of the Harvest Feast Holiday. While Thanksgiving is a time for feasts and giving thanks, MIR gives thanks to this prolific artist as he reminds us of the beauty of American Indian culture.




George Catlin was born in Pennsylvania in 1796 to a mother who helped foster his fascination for the American Indians. She recounted stories of the Western Frontier and of her time as a captive of an Indian tribe.

Catlin was inspired by what he called a ‘vanishing race’ and began collecting artifacts and studying the cultures of many tribes throughout North America. He became, by most standards, a historian of Native Americans.

He first studied art at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and painted members of the Seneca tribe living on a nearby Indian Reservation. Catlin was mostly a portrait painter, depicting the ‘true Americans’ in full garb and face paint to show off their culture and beauty. The portraits he produced included men, women and children from many different tribes including Pawnee, Mandan, Hidatsa, Sioux, Ponca, Arikara, Plains Ojibwa, Plains Cree, Santee, Seminole, Iroquois and countless others.

In 1830, Catlin traveled to St. Louis and met William Clark. He accompanied him to Upper Mississippi, Leavenworth and Ft. Laramie, all the while recording what he saw with both pen and paint. His writings became as famous as his paintings, recounting colorful tales of Indian life and entertaining stories of Catlin’s interactions with the tribesmen and women. His writings, so detailed and thoughtful, would often help him to finish his paintings, re-doing them at a later date to better evoke the realism that his pen took note of.

His writings, paintings, and numerous artifacts ended up, in 1838, in Catlin’s Indian Gallery on display. Catlin wanted to relay all he had learned from his travels out West, and so the artist and writer began giving lectures and recounting his tales of the lives of the American Indians. He also wrote of his experiences in a published book from 1848, titled Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians.




The images George Catlin left behind are colorfully detailed accounts of the American West in the mid 19th century. His passion for the American Indians, their culture, and their impact on North America has spurred countless paintings, writings, and historical documentation from this artist and historian.

The contents from the Indian Gallery now reside in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

So as we all prepare our turkeys on the 25th of November, we should also think back to the influential people who are responsible for Thanksgiving. While many of us think of pilgrims and Indians, what better way to remember than to see the art of George Catlin.




Researched and written Taylor Maatman.

MIR Appraisal Services, Inc.
Principal Appraiser: Farhad Radfar, ISA AM
307 N. Michigan Avenue, Suite 308
Chicago, IL 60601
(312) 814-8510

MIR Appraisal Services, Inc., is located just steps from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Cultural Center; please do give us a ring to set up an appointment for a verbal evaluation of your most prized works of art.

Getting Ready for Winter with Edward Willis Redfield

The enchanting landscapes of Edward Willis Redfield are some of the most popular American Impressionist paintings in history. The artist was born in Delaware in late December of 1869. He exhibited artistic talent at a young age and attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and later traveled abroad to England and France. While in France, Refield took influences from Impressionist painters Monet, Pissarro, and Thaulow, an artist most famous for his winter scenes. These painters’ technique of painting en plain-air served as a model for Redfield, and like many Impressionists before him, the Fountainebleu Forest became the subject of his first major break. Road-Forest of Fountainebleu was a turning point in Redfield’s career and helped him procure his first solo show at the Doll and Richards Gallery in Boston. The painting was the first snow scene Redfield took directly from nature, a theme the artist would continue throughout his career.

In 1893, Redfield married a woman from London whom he met while travelling abroad. Economic difficulties of the late 19th century forced the couple to move to a farm in Center Bridge, Pennsylvania. The necessity of living off the land and dealing with nature’s unpredictability became inspiration again for the artist. While the shift in economy created an urban world of impersonality and loss of self-discovery, Redfield’s respect for nature deepened. His winter landscapes, perhaps the most compelling of his paintings, were painted in zero degree weather, with blowing winds and freezing snowfall. In an article from 1906, writer B.J.O. Flower proclaimed that Redfield was a man who confronted life with directness and intensity. This sentiment was shared by many Americans at the time, for the differences between city and country life were always at the forefront of their minds. Even for painters, the difference in character came from a difference in environment.

From 1900 to 1910, Redfield painted a number of snow scenes outdoors in one sitting. The artist wanted to capture the spontaneity of light and color of one day or just a part of a day. In doing so Redfield creates some of the most memorable Impressionist snowscapes from the early 1900’s. In Hillside at Center Bridge from 1904, Redfield depicts the transient effects of light and atmosphere. His swift technique is evident as quick brushstrokes create the dead grasses along the bank, making the painting an immediate experience of the viewer.
At the apex of his career he had exhibited at fifteen solo shows and was awarded over twenty-seven prizes for his paintings. His paintings now hang in some of the most prestigious museums in the world.

(The painting below, titled “Snow Scene: Lumberville, Pennsylvania” sold for $163,800 at auction in June of 2009.)

Getting Ready for Winter with Edward Willis Redfield

Home by the River

The enchanting landscapes of Edward Willis Redfield are some of the most popular American Impressionist paintings in history. The artist was born in Delaware in late December of 1869. He exhibited artistic talent at a young age and attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and later traveled abroad to England and France. In France, Refield took influences from Impressionist painters Monet, Pissarro, and Thaulow, an artist most famous for his winter scenes.

These painters’ technique of painting en plain-air served as a model for Redfield, and like many Impressionists before him, the Fountainebleu Forest became the subject of his first major break. Road-Forest of Fountainebleu was a turning point in Redfield’s career and helped him procure his first solo show at the Doll and Richards Gallery in Boston. The painting was the first snow scene Redfield took directly from nature, a theme the artist would continue throughout his career.

The Village of Center Bridge

By 1893, Redfield was married to a London woman he met in his travels abroad. The economic difficulties of the late 19th century drove the couple to the country. Living on a farm in Center Bridge, Pennsylvania, the necessity to live off the land and deal with nature’s unpredictability became inspiration again for the artist. While the shift in economy created an urban world of impersonality and loss of self-discovery, Redfield’s respect for nature deepened. His winter landscapes, perhaps the most compelling of his paintings, were painted in zero degree weather, with blowing winds and freezing snowfall.

In an article from 1906, writer B.J.O. Flower proclaimed that Redfield was a man who confronted life with directness and intensity. This sentiment was shared by many Americans at the time, for the differences between city and country life were always at the forefront of their minds. Even for painters, the difference in character came from a difference in environment.

Hillside at Center Bridge

From 1900 to 1910, Redfield painted a number of snow scenes outdoors in one sitting. The artist wanted to capture the spontaneity of light and color of one day or just a part of a day. In doing so Redfield creates some of the most memorable Impressionist snowscapes from the early 1900’s. In Hillside at Center Bridge from 1904, Redfield depicts the transient effects of light and atmosphere. His swift technique is evident as quick brushstrokes create the dead grasses along the bank, making the painting an immediate experience of the viewer.

The painter was now in the apex of his career. He exhibited at fifteen solo shows and was awarded over twenty-seven prizes for his paintings. His paintings now hang in some of the most prestigious museums in the world.

(The painting below, titled Snow Scene: Lumberville, Pennsylvania sold for $163,800 at auction in June of 2009.)

Snow Scene: Lumberville, Pennsylvania

Works Cited:

Kimmerle, Constance, and Edward Willis Redfield. Edward W. Redfield: Just Values and Fine Seeing. Doylestown, PA: James A. Michener Art Museum, 2004. Print.

http://www.questroyalfineart.com/artist/edward-willis-redfield

Grandma Moses: A Unique Artist

Grandma Moses, born Anna Mary Robertson in 1860, in New York, was a renowned American folk artist in the early 20^thcentury. Her images are easily recognizable and popular in demand, emitting a sense of comfort and nostalgia. What makes Grandma Moses such a unique artist is that she did not bloom as a painter until her late 70s. Although her work sold for thousands of dollars, she was self-taught and lacked having any formal art training. It was because of her primitive style as a painter that made her such a success.

Grandma Moses

Grandma Moses depicted simple scenes that reflected rural life and the countryside in the 1800s. She often featured families and communities in midst of honest, hard work exemplifying the traditional American way of life during that period. Such tasks as husking corn, butter churning, making soap and tending to livestock were characterized in her pictures portraying farm life.

A Fine Gobbler (left), Thunderstorm (right)

She often painted seasonal pictures of Vermont, upstate New York and Hoosick Valley, from which she could see from her window. Many of the images were painted from memory, including the clothing, household items and furniture. Detailed and colorful, the landscapes appear one dimensional, the houses and trees patterned across the frame and the key figures seemingly flat. Reminiscent of child book illustrations, her style brought forth a sense of happiness and charm.

A Beautiful World

Most all of Grandma Moses’ paintings were painted on old pieces of wood, adding a certain authenticity to the composition. Her paintings were popular images for the holidays and were soon reproduced on Christmas cards, tiles and fabrics and distributed all over the world. Overall, she painted more than 1600 paintings.

A Checkered House

During the Depression she was trying to sell her paintings at the Women’s Exchange, when she was discovered by an art collector. By 1939, she had three showing at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She became a national icon in the 1950s and was cited by the National Press Club as being one of the five most newsworthy women of 1950. She even made an appearance on the Edward R. Murrow television show and her photo graced the cover of Time magazine in 1953. Despite her fame, Grandma Moses remained dedicated to her family and true to herself. “If people want to make a fuss over me, I let’em, but I was the same person before as I am now,” she once told reporters.