George Oberteuffer

George Oberteuffer (1878-1940) was a distinguished American painter whose long career carried him from Philadelphia through nearly two decades in France and back to important teaching positions in the United States. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Oberteuffer attended Princeton University, graduating in 1900, and then enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied alongside such notable figures as Thomas Anshutz and William Merritt Chase. This rigorous academic foundation gave him the technical grounding for his mature career.

In 1901 Oberteuffer traveled to France, where he would remain until 1920, studying, painting, and teaching art. During his years abroad he immersed himself in the extraordinary artistic ferment of pre-war and interwar Paris. In 1905, while attending the Académie Julian, Oberteuffer met his future wife Henriette Amiard, a French painter in her own right. The two often exhibited their works together, and their partnership seemed to contribute significantly to the success of both their careers. While in Paris, Oberteuffer became a member of the Sociétaire du Salon d'Automne as well as the Salon des Indépendants, placing him within the significant French exhibition circuit of his era. He is also known to have taught at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière from 1919 until 1920.

Oberteuffer and his wife returned to the United States in 1922, and he began a brief tenure as an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He went on to teach at the Minneapolis School of Art, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Grand Central School of Art in New York, becoming one of the most widely traveled art teachers of his generation. In 1939 Oberteuffer was elected to the National Academy of Design, one of the highest recognitions available to an American painter of his era.

In 1940, while George and Henriette Oberteuffer were living in Boston, the Vose Gallery held an Oberteuffer family exhibition that included the work of their son Karl. This would prove to be the last exhibition of George Oberteuffer's lifetime. A short time afterward, while working on a large mural commission for the W.P.A. alongside his wife, he contracted pneumonia and died. His paintings are held in significant American museum and private collections, where they remain accomplished examples of transatlantic American painting from the early twentieth century.