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GumTree Museum of Art
P.O. Box 786
Tupelo, MS 38802
662.844.ARTS

tina@gumtreemuseum.com
 

Mississippi Arts Commission's Second
American Masterpieces Series

About the Artists

To Info About American Masters of the MS Gulf Coast


Excerpts from the book...
American Masters of the Mississippi Gulf Coast:
George Ohr, Dusti Bonge`, Walter Anderson, Richmond Barthe`

By Patti Carr Black


Published by: Mississippi Arts Commission and Department of Art,

Mississippi State University
Copyright 2009



Portraits of George Ohr, c1900


George Ohr of Biloxi has been called the “first of the artist-potters in the United States, and arguably the finest,” by Garth Clark, ceramics historian.  Ohr was the son of a young German immigrant, Johanna Wiedman, and George Ohr, an Alsatian.  George and Johanna Ohr had five children.  Their first son, George Edgar Ohr, would grow up to be a flamboyant and memorable figure in his hometown of Biloxi, as well as a well known potter in America.


All photographs of Ohr pottery are courtesy of the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, Biloxi, MS


Face vase c1895,

Glazed ceramic, 7 ½” x 6”.

Courtesy of Norma and Dona Carpenter,

Biloxi, MS

Double-handled vase. 

Glazed ceramic, 7 ¼” x 7 ¼”.

Private Collection



Dusti Bonge’ was born Eunice Lyle Swetman on August 9, 1903, to Orcenith George Swetman and Eunice Lyle Swetman of Biloxi.  She had a privileged upbringing as the daughter of a successful Gulf Coast banker and tree farmer.  Her father was a founding member of The People’s Bank of Biloxi in 1896, and quickly became the major stock holder.

 

 

Graduation photograph of Eunice Swetman, 1920, courtesy of Dusti Bonge’ Foundation. 

 Dusti Bonge’ acquired her nickname in Manhattan in the 1920s.


“Biloxi Yacht Club”

oil pastel, 18:x20”

“Untitled” Joss paper watercolors, each 4” x 4”



Walter Anderson….Probably no artist in America has responded to elements of the natural world more intensely that Walter Anderson of Ocean Springs, who produced his major works on Horn Island in the MS Sound.


Walter Anderson on a bench, 1930


Rower (self-portrait), watercolor


“Stokesia,”

block print,

7 ¾” x 5 7/10”

“Two Striped Kittens,”

watercolor

11” x 8 ½”



Richmond Barthe…..In his lifetime, Richmond, Barthe’, of Bay St. Louis achieved both fame and fortune.  As part of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and 1930s he was in the vanguard of black artists in America.  His work garnered much attention by the press and praise by art critics.  At the height of his career in Manhattan, he walked away from almost certain ascendancy in the art history of America. He led an almost ethereal life pursuing his art, still obtaining fame and fortune, by not directed by either.

 

Richmond Barthe’, 1928. 

From the Alain Locke Papers,

Moorland Spingarn Research Center. 

Courtesy of Howard University,

Washington, D.C.

“Feral Benga”
Richmond Barthé
Courtesy Mississippi Museum of Art,

 Jackson




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