| Hamlin Garland (1860-1840), noted novelist and dramatist, was a native of Wisconsin. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1922 for the biography, "A Daughter Of The Middle Border." "Stoltenberg's paintings typically show the woodlands and farms of rurual Wisconsin, but in the course of his rural excursions he sometimes painted buildings of some particular historical interest. During the summer of 1937, for example, he was painting near Onalaska, Wisconsin, in the La Crosse Valley when his attention was drawn to a farmhouse which he proceeded to paint in its landscape setting. It was only later that he was told by a local resident that the house was the boyhood home of the Wisconsin writer Hamlin Garland (1860-1940). Stoltenberg then sent a photograph of the painting to Garland, who wrote back to confirm that the house was, indeed, his boyhood home. Stoltenberg later donated the painting to the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, where it remains today." (Peter C. Merrill, "Hans Stoltenberg: Painter of Rural Wisconsin," Yearbook of German-American Studies, 27, 1992, p. 93). |
