2021 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 54
VERSO
Label, Arlington Gallery, Santa Barbara, California
Label, Mitchell Brown Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
According to noted art historian Rick Stewart, “Carl Oscar Borg was twenty years old when he left his native Sweden for England. He worked in London as a scenery painter for several years before immigrating to America in 1902. Two years later he moved to California, where he would live for the rest of his life. He was initially employed as a scene painter for the newly established motion picture industry, an experience that surely influenced his outlook on western themes. In 1905, he traveled throughout California and the Southwest, sketching and making notes, and had his first one-man exhibition as a fine artist. Soon after that Borg traveled to Paris for further study, where he advanced rapidly as a painter, gaining notoriety at home as a prizewinner in the Panama-Pacific Exposition in 1915. By this time, Borg had relocated to Santa Barbara and become close friends with Edward Borein. The two painters shared the same enthusiasm for the West, and Borg developed a local reputation as a teacher of merit. He traveled widely, painting and sketching wherever he went, and specializing in the scenery and subjects of the Southwest.”
PROVENANCE
Estate of Carl Oscar Borg, Santa Barbara, California
Arlington Gallery, Santa Barbara, California
Private collection, Los Angeles, California
Mitchell Brown Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
John and Toni Bloomberg, La Jolla, California
EXHIBITED
Visions of the West: Highlights from the Bloomberg Collection, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California, 2020-21
LITERATURE
Albin Widen, Carl Oscar Borg, Ett Knostnarsode, Nordisk Rotogravyr, 1953, plate 64, illustrated