Blanche Ostertag

Blanche Ostertag was a painter and illustrator from St. Louis. Born in 1872, she began her art training in 1892 at the St. Louis Museum of Fine Arts, where she completed a short month-long course before moving to Paris. In Paris, Ostertag attended the Académie Julian and studied with Leon Augustin Lhermitte, Rodolphe Julian and Raphael Collin. Her works were exhibited in both of the Paris salons, the Champs-Elysées and the more progressive Salon du Champ de Mars, in 1895 and 1896.

Ostertag traveled throughout Europe while she was a student in France, exposing her to a wide range of artistic expression, from fine art to craftwork to decorative arts. She spent winters in Paris, and in the summers traveled to Holland and Italy. The work of the Italian Renaissance artists Perugino (Pietro Vannucci), Fra Angelico and Paolo Veronese in particular attracted Ostertag, and influenced her decorative arts later in her career.

Ostertag returned to the United States in 1896 and took up residence in Chicago, where she established a studio at 187 Rush Street. She quickly became a recognized painter, illustrator and decorative artist, working in a variety of media such as drawings, paintings, print and mosaics. Her mastery of these media resulted in two separate features in the art magazine Brush and Pencil in 1897 and 1898. One article emphasized the skill and breadth of Ostertag’s work: “One must ascend into her own eyrie of a studio to realize how many themes and materials she experimented with, and with what fine feeling she has handled all” (McDougal, "Blanche Ostertag," 133).

Ostertag’s visual work was often described as free and direct, frequently depicting children. She illustrated a number of children’s books, such as Old Songs for Young America in 1901. As a decorative artist, her work often intersected with architecture and design, such as her mosaic design for the fireplace in the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Husser House in 1899. Some of Ostertag's other significant works included the murals The Sailing of the Claremont at New Amsterdam Theatre, New York, and Everlasting Covenant at Northwestern Railway Station in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

She died in New York in 1915.