biographie de Fremont F. ELLIS (1897-1985)
Birth place: Virginia City, MT
Death place: Virginia City
Addresses: Santa Fe, NM/Los Angeles in 1976
Profession: Landscape painter, graphic artist, etcher, teacher
Studied: mainly self-taught; ASL, 1915 (three months)
Exhibited: S.Indp.A., 1920; Calif. AC, 1921; LACMA, 1922 (solo), 1924 (Henry E Huntington Award); Oakland Art Gallery, 1950 (prize),1953 (med); Springville (UT) Mus.(When Evening, Comes Navajo Girls, purchase prize)
Member: Santa Fe P&S; Los Cinco Pintores, 1921-26 (founder).
Work: El Paso (TX) Mus.; Mus. New Mexico, Santa Fe; Thomas Gilcrease Inst. Am. History, Tulsa, OK; Art Inst., Lubbock, TX; Univ. Calif., Los Angeles. Commissions: S. S. America (mural).
Comments: Went to optometry school but failed in business. He became a fulltime painter at age 20 and went to Santa Fe in 1919, but moved back to Southern California. He soon returned to New Mexico and worked as a sign painter and photographer. He created an artists' colony in Santa Fe along with Bakos, Mruck, Nash and Shuster.
Sources: WW73; WW47. More recently, see Hughes, Artists of California, 168; Peggy and Harold Samuels, 156.