Pop Hart was an early 20th century American artist. He specialized in watercolour paintings and etching, and depicted numerous sceneries with groups of people doing various activities.
Background
Pop Hart was born George Overbury Hart on May 10, 1868 in Cairo, Illinois, United States. He was the eldest of four children of Henry L. and Emma Elizabeth (Wood) Hart.
His genealogical background was interesting. His great-grandfather, John Hart, was dean of Bristol Cathedral, England. His grandfather, Samuel Overbury Hart, an Oxford graduate, emigrated to Canada and thence moved to Cairo, where he married and had two sons. These sons and their father served the Union in the Civil War. Presumably through an acquaintance formed while in military service, Henry L. Hart married Elizabeth Wood, the daughter of an English tea merchant. Their home after 1874 was at Rochester, New York, where the father established himself as a manufacturer of printers' rollers and glue.
As a youth, Hart went into the glue factory, but he found the work irksome - it was said of him that he preferred sketching on the walls to attending to the gluepots - and after a quarrel with his father, he left to make his way in the world by his painting.
Education
Hart called himself self-taught, but it is quite likely that he had instruction in drawing and designing from his grandfather, who was similarly gifted, while he was still in school.
At some time in his career he had brief training at the Chicago Art Institute and later he went to Julian's academy in Paris.
Career
In 1893 Hart was in Chicago, painting signs and political campaign pictures, and doing other commercial work. Much has been made of his "renouncing" the trade of sign-painting to become an "artist, " but his greatest interest was always in traveling to strange places to record his impressions of people and scenes.
In 1907 he built for himself a small stucco house at Coytesville, New Jersey, where in summer he worked at an etching-press - expertly. His winters were usually spent elsewhere. He sketched in Iceland, Egypt, South America, the West Indies, and in the South Pacific. His familiar nickname, "Pop, " resulted from his once returning from the tropics with flowing whiskers. The name remained; even in museum catalogues he was listed as "Pop" Hart. After 1912 he began to spend his summers working in a motion-picture studio, painting scenery. In 1921 he gave that up.
Hart died at a private hospital in New York in 1933, two years after he had undergone an operation that sapped his strength. He was buried at Mt. Hope Cemetery, Yonkers, New York.
Memorial exhibitions of his work were held at the Brooklyn Museum and the Chicago Art Institute in November and December 1933. His bust portrait by Reuben Nakian was given by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. , to the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Views
Quotations:
Hart once said to an interviewer: "If you're going to paint a picture that's worth painting, or etch a plate that's worth etching, you've got to go off in a corner by yourself and suffer. You can't do it wearing a white collar and holding a teacup. "
Membership
Hart was twice elected president of the Brooklyn Society of Etchers.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Hart's longtime friend and fellow-artist, John Taylor Arms, said of him: "Hart was an artist of rare sensibility and deep human understanding; his art reflects vitality and keen awareness of the things and people among whom he lived. An accomplished designer, a fine draughtsman and colorist, he has left us, in his plates and canvases, a significant record of all that he felt so deeply in his journey through life. "
