OCTOBER 2020 – MAY 2021
Austrian-born Julius Seyler (1873-1955) began his artistic studies in the Munich Academy in the late 1890s, where he concentrated on painting plein air landscapes and wildlife. His unique style developed during a transitional period in art history when many artists turned from painting impressions gathered from observing physical reality to painting from a perspective that privileged their subjective emotions.
In 1913, Seyler traveled to the United States, where, over the next two summers, he visited Glacier National Park at the urging of his brother-in-law, Louis Hill, the president of the Great Northern Railroad.
While Seyler’s art captured the range of his impressions of the park, most of his subject matter focused on historic nostalgia about the Blackfeet people. Through his unique post-impressionist gaze, Seyler builds form, motion, and atmosphere through the application of color. In this way, more than any other artist, Seyler imparts the lived experience of the landscape and its emotional effect on the Blackfeet people.