Harlan Lizer (1910-2003) American, Signed and Personalized Landscape Oil on Canvas. Depicts a rocky beachfront with an artist sitting at an easel in the foreground, painting away. Signed and dated 1985 bottom right. Message written in ink on back of canvas reads "Gift to Tedie and Jimmie from Elizabeth and Harlan January 1986." Nearby are two strips of tape cut to look like arrows with more written on them: one says "Puff the Magic Dragon Land of Honolai (His eye)," and the other reads "Elizabeth trying to make enough money to buy a surfboard." This indicates the subject of the painting is his second wife, Margaret, likely made during a working journey to the West Coast. 

Condition: Great. 

Overall Size: 20 3/4 x 24 3/4 x 1 1/4 in. 

Sight Size: 15 1/2 x 19 3/4 in. 

Harlan Lizer Jr. was born on December 1st, 1910 in Ortonville, Minnesota. Although he began as a woodworker, apprenticed to his father who came from a long line of German artists, he found himself drawn to visual art, especially after his family relocated in 1920 to Crosby, in the unincorporated township of Crow Wing. The enormous vistas and landscape inspired him, and he traveled the country while teaching himself to paint, marrying Nellie Burt who became his assistant in 1934. A few years later he had the opportunity to study under Alfred Morang, and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1939 to continue his studies, where he spent the rest of his life. Morang’s influence on his work was significant, and his landscapes from then on were focused on the vastness and sparseness of the American Southwest, usually eschewing people in favor of majestic natural wonders. After the death of Nellie in 1972 he remarried a year later to Margaret Elizabeth Straub, an artist from the Santa Fe community, who encouraged him to travel more for inspiration. He continued to paint right up until his death in an Alamogordo hospital on April 21st, 2003, and his works are still sought by collectors for their brilliant depictions of life on the rugged American frontier. 

Great.