Kelly, Harold Osman, 1884-1955

Born in Bucyrus, Ohio, but lured out West as a youth, Harold Osman Kelly (1884-1955) traveled a long, hard road before turning his hand to painting as a means of support. Kelly's father was a Lancaster County, Pennsylvania railroader and his mother an Ohio born German. After losing his health to an itinerant working life and his farm in the Texas Panhandle to the Depression, Kelly was encouraged by friends to sell his watercolor and oil paintings for a living. As a significant primitive artist, Kelly's paintings present a world of rolling, green pastures, tranquil blue skies, and solid farms and farming towns, also populated by a thick dusting of livestock, including wily goats, unpredictable donkeys, fine mules and lively horses. The robust folk are reminiscent of Kelly's mother's German ancestors in Ohio, similar to those living in Fredericksburg, Texas, a town Kelly often visited for inspiration. As these letters so vividly attest, when Kelly sold a painting, it was the buyer's initiation into a warm friendship with the raconteur artist, not a mere business transaction. Kelly died in Blanket, Tex. where he had settled after losing his farm in 1939.

From the description of Correspondence, 1948-1990 (bulk 1948-1958). (Texas A&M University). WorldCat record id: 50135621

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