Gag art collector donates to BCHS

Work features watercolor, ink sketch

on sandpaper

By FRITZ BUSCH

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Among the latest and more unusual addition to the Wanda Gag art collection at Brown County Historical Museum is a watercolor on sandpaper and ink sketch on the reverse side.

Entitled "Spring House," the original watercolor is on a 14 1/4 x 10 1/4-inch sheet of sandpaper. Gag signed her name in pencil in the lower right of the sheet. On the back is an ink sketch of a man and woman at a tree labeled "Asta & Ev @319."

The piece came to town thanks to the passion of New Ulm art lover George L. Glotzbach. He purchased the art from Ernest S. Kramer Fine Arts & Prints, Inc. of Wellesley, Mass.

"She was a great experimenter and a free spirit," Glotzbach said of Gag, referring to her watercolor on sandpaper and other art works.

Although Glotzbach was born in New Ulm, he became businessman and lived in a variety of larger American cities before moving back home recently. He became interested in Gag's art several years ago after speaking on the telephone with Brown County Historical Museum Research Librarian Darla Gebhard.

Living in Baltimore at the time, Glotzbach began "haunting" as he called it, old bookstores and libraries for Gag's items. His search included books, photographs, and newspaper articles.

"It seemed just about everything but (Gag's 1928 children's book) Millions of Cats was out of print," Glotzbach said.

He began making his wants known on art leaders' lists. He wrote letters and attended art fairs. His collection began to grow.

Glotzbach got Wanda Gag's sandpaper watercolor and ink sketch from artist Clarence H. Carter who purchased it from Wanda's husband, Earle Marshall Humphreys.

Wanda Gag was an author, artist and illustrator of children's books. She expressed herself in verse and prose, paints, crayons, watercolors and anything else that would produce beauty, according her obituary to the July 4, 1946 New Ulm Review.

Gag found fame with "Millions of Cats." She wrote, illustrated and painted a glowing picture of her life in New Ulm and the Twin Cities in "Growing Pains." Her works were exhibited in 19 of the greater art museums in America and Europe.

She was the daughter of Anton Gag, a New Ulm artist at the turn of the 20th century. She never forgot her father's dying admonition. "Wanda," he said. "What I have left undone you will have to do." He sought an art career and had great talent, according to Wanda Gag's obituary in the Review.

Wanda Gag died at age 53 in 1946 in New York.