George M. Ottinger

George M. Ottinger

By Alfred Lambourne

My first of friends, the friend of my youth, the one who was these, my oasis in a desert of realism, the friend who opened for me the gateway into the realms of art, and who shared with me his tubes of paint, his roll of canvas, when such things were, in an isolated land, almost worth their weight in — gold I scarcely could believe that he was dying. And yet he was. How gently, how peacefully he passed away ! One was not quite sure, so calm it was, that he was gone. He had lived beyond man's allotted time of three score years and ten. Perhaps in his last days of quiet and peace he had learned to make a friend of death before he reached life's end. It is not long ago that one of our leading scientists and religious thinkers met upon the street the writer of these thoughts. "I wish to ask you," he said, "is it a truth that you have experienced a belief that the artist's work would find no place in another sphere of action? Surely it is not true?" And yet it was so. But the expressed doubt needed to be explained. No place for the painter's or the sculptor's art, the writer meant, no place for that which only imitates, makes that which is de-

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void of life. Only a place for the creative artist, who would work with the things of life, for is not The Supreme the master creative artist of all? Perhaps some such thought was in the mind of the artist just gone, when, a few nights ago, he spoke, his head resting upon the pillow from which he was never to lift it again, to the writer. "I do not take an interest in such things as I once did." Of course not. What to one who is longing for the secrets of eternal life, are the painted canvas, the chiselled stone? His thoughts are with the actual, the imperishable, that in which all things live. George M. Ottinger was a man with a many-sided mind, a broad comprehension of things. When he came to this western land he came when life was surrounded with difficulties; there were roads to be made, canals to be dug, a stubborn soil to be subdued, in short, all the struggle of pioneer life, was going for- ward. His idealism made him an artist, but in those days there was necessarily no room for art. He must work at the practical to make his daily bread, and so his art dream became more or less impossible, and he realized that in one way he was not en rapport with a new country and its stirring times. No one could better tell an anecdote or reminiscence than could George M. Ottinger. It was worth the while to hear him repeat his experiences in his "Life Before the Mast." He passed around the world while in his teens and could make his adven- tures transpire again in words. Many times he has thrilled the writer of this with his tales of adventure aboard a whaling ship among the icebergs of the frozen north and by the palm islands of southern seas. He recently spoke to me concerning a manu- script of his, "A Boy's Voyage Around the World," which must contain interesting matter. Yes, George M. Ottinger was ver- satile; he could paint stage scenery, some of the scenes which he executed for our own historic play-house have never been bet- tered since, and after a day's work on the scene-painter's gallery, he could go upon the stage at night and act a part and with credit, too. There are many people yet living who will remem- ber him in the part so cleverly done of the slave auctioneer in the play of "The Octoroon," and also the part of the King in "Hamlet." And then he could talk art, philosophy and history, after he had been as "chief" at a fire. Upon ancient America he was an encyclopedia of knowledge. He knew all about the Incas of Peru and the emperors of Mexico. He never tired of talking of the history and architectural monuments of those lands. His painting, "The Last of the Aztecs," was purchased by the city council in the early days. To further show the many-sided intellectuality of this man who has just left us, I will speak of his connection with the

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— Twentieth Ward Institute, of which he was working in com- pany with other prominent men of the time, one of the original founders. In that Institute, with his friend, the late C. R. Sav- age, he prepared lectures dealing upon questions of light — the resolving of light into its component parts of primary color, etc., and also, like the artist S. F. B. Morse, the originator of the electric telegraph, showing electric possibilities, the beginning of our now wonderful system of lighting. This was in the old adobe meetinghouse of the Twentieth Ward, and that Institute was one of the leading ones out of which grew the present Y. M. M. I. A. He also painted a multitude of marine and landscape pic-

"Never Heard From"

tures. One of the former, "The Caravels of Magellan Entering the Pacific," was admirable. A picture which he painted long ago and called "Never Heard From," was filled with tragic po- etry; it portrayed the skeleton of a ship, which had been wrecked upon a reef, all hands lost, and the fate of which was never known. Only the gulls hover over the remains of the vessel, and the sky is golden with a tropic sunset. He painted many pictures from our own mountain scenery, showing it under all conditions of atmosphere and season. Two of these pictures were called "The Canyon Glory" and "The Canyon Gloom," the first showing the beauty of the autumn foliage upon the heights and the other canyon darkened with a passing thunder storm. Had George M. Ottinger passed his life in some art center