George Laurence Nelson Art

George Laurence Nelson was born into a family of artists. His father, Carl Hirschberg, studied under Cabanel in Paris, was active at the Art Students League and was a co-founder of the Salmagundi Club. His mother, Alice Kerr-Nelson, was a proficient watercolorist and had collaborated on paintings with W.M. Chase and C. Y. Turner. As a child, Nelson began to work in crayon, and under his mother's influence, he worked in watercolor. In Paris, he began to work in oil. In 1925, he took up lithography. His attention turned to many subjects, portraiture, landscape, flower painting and still life. By the age of 10, he was publishing a magazine with his writings and drawings. Nelson attended high school in Buffalo, where his parents had moved. After high school, Nelson went to New York, where he studied at the Art Students League and the National Academy (1906–08). He was then made an assistant instructor in the Academy Night School. It was in this New York period that Nelson changed his name because of rampant anti-German sentiments. He first exhibited at the age of 18. Nelson's first large commissions included copying 20 old master paintings at the Metropolitan Museum for Mrs. Henry Clay Frick and 64 portraits for King George V of England. These latter were completed in London, where Nelson traveled in 1911. He then went on to Paris, where he studied under Laurens and Constant at the Académie Julian and under Gerome at the Beaux-Arts.

Nelson returned to New York in 1913 because of his mother's illness. Back in New York, Nelson was made a full instructor at the Academy, where he taught the antique class until 1941. Nelson also taught at the Cooper Union. Nelson began spending summers in Kent, Connecticut in 1915. In 1916, he married Hermine Charlotta Redgrave, a writer, whom he met when Redgrave was assigned to do an interview for him for The New York Globe. On the outbreak of World War I, Nelson worked as a draftsman for the Warren MacArthur Company in Bantam, CT., for two and a half years. Because of crowded conditions in New York, the Nelsons decided to remain in the country and 1919 they purchased a home in Kent, Connecticut, which they called Seven Hearths because of its seven fireplaces. After World War II, they lived in Kent year-round and became very active in the artistic life of the town. They cultivated a beautiful flower garden there, from which Nelson drew the subject matter for his flower paintings. Nelson bequeathed his home to the Kent Historical Society, which now makes its headquarters there. The house is open to the public in the summers. Nelson was known particularly as a portraitist and was never short of commissions. He was principally influenced by Whistler and Sargent. Nelson’s work was handled by the Grand Central Art Galleries.