Olaf C. Seltzer

born Copenhagen, Denmark, 1877; died Great Falls, Montana, 1957

BiographyOlaf Seltzer was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. His drawing ability was noted by his instructors and he enrolled at the age of 12 in the Danish Art School and Polytechnic Institute. In the early 1890s he immigrated to the United States with his mother, settling in Great Falls, Montana, where he first found work breaking horses and then became a machinist for the Great Northern Railway, sketching and painting in his free time. Seltzer became friends with painter Charles Russell, who also lived in Great Falls, and was mentored and influenced by the older artist. By the early 1900s Seltzer began working in oil, painting images of wildlife and imagined scenes of cowboy life. He later completed a group of Russell’s paintings left incomplete upon Russell’s death. Seltzer’s most notable commission was a group of 100 miniature watercolors of Montana history for a New York collector. A highly prolific artist, Seltzer created over 2,500 works during his lifetime.

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