Edgar L. Bloomster (1895-1968)
"Ship"
oil, 1933
LFAC #083
Biography
Edgar Bloomster was an artist and author who lived in the Chicago, IL, area. He was born April 6, 1895 and died in San Francisco in May 1968. He is the author and illustrator of a book entitled Sailing and Small Craft Down the Ages, published in 1940 and reissued in a second edition in 1969. The book was published by the United States Naval Institute.
Bloomster exhibited in Chicago at the Swedish American Art Association exhibit at Marshall Fields galleries in 1936 (“Bathers and Surf”) and in the Carson-Pirie Galleries in Chicago in 1933 (“An Australian Wool Clipper”) and 1936 (“Waning Sunset”).
The painting by Bloomster in the Fine Arts Collection is an oil on canvas seascape featuring a sailing ship in rigged in full sail. It is signed in the lower left corner, E.L. Bloomster 1933. It was donated to Luther College by Arthur Andersen in the late 1930’s. Andersen, founder of the accounting firm which bears his name, was actively interested in his Norwegian ancestry. He was a supporter of several of the colleges in the upper Midwest founded by Norwegian-Americans.
Ref: The Art Institute of Chicago Catalogue of an Exhibition of Etchings, January 28-March 1, 1931; 1 page from the Chicago Art Institute libraries scrapbook, dated April 1932-1933 and 2 pages dated February to August 1936; Wilson, Raymond. Index of American Print Exhibitions, 1882-1940. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1988.
