Herman W. Hansen

born Dithmarschen, Germany, 1854; died Alameda, California, 1924

BiographyHerman Wendleborg Hansen spent his youth in his hometown of Dithmarschen, Germany, reading James Fenimore Cooper’s tales of adventure in the American frontier. At 16 he was sent to Hamburg to study painting by his father, who worked as a draftsman. Hansen went on to study in London before immigrating to America in 1877, where he found work as a commercial artist in New York and Chicago. An 1879 commission from the Chicago and North Western Railway sent Hansen west for the first time, to the Dakotas. After his return he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1879 to 1882 and then settled permanently in San Francisco. He used his California base to travel throughout the Southwest and Mexico, collecting sketches to be turned into meticulously detailed paintings in his studio. His body of work deals mostly with Native American warriors, cavalrymen, and cowboys working out on the plains. He found particular success among German collectors. Much of Hansen’s work was destroyed in his studio during the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, but thanks to his popularity overseas a portion of his work has survived.

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