biography of Matilda LOTZ (1858/61-1923)

Birth place: Franklin, TN

Death place: Tata, Hungary

Addresses: California; Paris, France; London, England; Algiers; Tata, Hungary

Profession: Painter

Studied: San Fran. Art Sch. with Virgil Williams; Van Marcke; in Paris with F. Barrias.

Exhibited: Paris Salon, 1882-86; NAD, 1888; Calif. Midwinter Int. Expo., 1894. Awards: Paris Salon (hon. men.); Paris Acad. Painting (two gold medals).

Work: CGA.

Comments: Member of a German immigrant family who were forced to leave Tennessee after the Civil War and then settled in California. After returning from art studies in Paris, she painted portraits of prominent people like Hearst and Stanford. She returned to Europe and was closely associated with Rosa Bonheur for several years. English nobility commissioned animal paintings from her and in the late 1890s she was invited to an estate in Hungary. The outbreak of WWI surprised her in Algiers, and expelled by the French, she had to leave behind her belongings and many of her paintings. Specialty: animal portraiture.

Sources: WW13; Hughes, Artists of California, 243-344; Fink, American Art at the Nineteenth-Century Paris Salons, 366-67.