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| Otis, George Demont (1879-1962). Landscape painter, etcher.
George Demont Otis was born in Memphis, TN on Sept. 21, 1879. After three seasons as a pitcher for Memphis and Nashville clubs, Otis abandoned a promising baseball career to pursue art. He first studied art at age 14 at the AIC followed by work at the PAFA and in New York at the Cooper Union, NAD, ASL, Brooklyn Academy, and with Robert Henri, Wm M. Chase, and John F. Carlson. While based in Chicago, Otis traveled extensively, often in the company of Thomas Moran. Early in the century he lived in Colorado, Taos and Santa Fe, NM. After moving to Los Angeles in 1919, he established a studio in Burbank where he worked for the movie studios. In his leisure he made frequent painting trips to the Indian reservations of New Mexico and Arizona. Moving to San Francisco in 1930, George Demont Otis established a studio in the former Arthur Putnam home and in 1934 moved across the Golden Gate to Kentfield into a home-studio at 907 Sir Francis Drake Blvd. Otis taught hundreds of students during his lifetime; however, in 1939 he stopped teaching to devote his last years to painting. An Impressionist, he is nationally recognized as a painter of mountain landscapes, sycamore and eucalyptus trees, and missions. A leader in conservation, he is known as the artistic father of Point Reyes Nat'l Seashore and the Golden Gate Nat'l Recreation area. George Demont Otis died at his home in Kentfield on Feb. 25, 1962.
Source:
Edan Hughes, "Artists in California 1786-1940"
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