Antoine Robidoux (Original Ottinger painting retouched by Ottinger's son. From Herbert Auerbach collection)
Painting [21.5 cm x 28.5 cm] mounted to an unevenly trimmed mount [25 cm x 30 cm]. Pinholes and light pencil markings and notations along the edges. Very Good. Item #70557
Fur trapper and trader Antoine Robidoux (1794-1860) was of French-Canadian descent. By the early 1830s, he was forming his own trade route along the Spanish intermountain corridor between Santa Fe and the Uinta Basin. Fort Uncompahgre and Fort Uintah were among his forts. After the trapping business began to decline in 1844, Robidoux went on to spend the next decade as an immigrant guide and army interpreter.
George Martin Ottinger (1833-1917) is considered among Utah's most prominent artists. After experiencing a tumultuous childhood and wandering extensively while employed as a young sailor, Ottinger briefly enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he set himself up as a painter of miniatures. In 1861, Ottinger and his mother, both converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, journeyed west by covered wagon to Utah. In Utah, he painted scenery for the Salt Lake Theatre, was involved in the founding and ten-month life of the Deseret Academy of Fine Arts, and continued his previous career as a photo-tinter in partnership with Charles Roscoe Savage, a well known English photographer in the Salt Lake Valley since 1860. In 1881, he helped assemble the Salt Lake Art Association, and in partnership with Alice Merrill Horne, initiated the Alice Art Collection, predecessor of the Utah Art Institute. He was also a member of the University of Deseret faculty through the 1880s and into the '90s. (Information from an edited entry from the "Dictionary of Utah Art" (1980) published in "Artists of Utah" by Robert S. Olpin, William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson, Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999).
Price: $500.00