This oil on panel by Charles Dahlgreen of Crystal Lake Illinois measures 18-1/4” x 22-1/4” or in the period gesso frame dimensions of 15-1/2” x 29-1/2” and is signed and dated lower right, Dahlgreen 1916 and titled, signed and dated verso, Crystal Lake ILL Chas. W. Dahlgreen 1916. There is also an old Fred M. Lawrence Company label verso... Fred M. Lawrence Co. Inc. was founded in 1898, and is located at 45 Drexel Dr in Bay Shore Long Island, New York. Charles Dahlgreen was best known for his etchings and landscape paintings and as part of the Brown County Art Colony produced many Impressionistic andscape paintings making this a quintessential representation of his work.
 
Biography:
Charles William Dahlgreen was born in Oak Park, Illinois to German immigrants on September 8, 1864. He studied in Dusseldorf, Germany in the 1880s. He left school to support his family and spent years working in foundaries, commercial art and also prospecting in the Klondike. He attended the Fine Arts Academy in Chicago in 1904 and studied under William Henderson and Wellington Reynolds. At the Chicago Art Institute he studied drawing under John Vanderpoel, portraiture with Frederick Freer, landscape composition with Henry Wolcott, and outdoor landscape instruction with John Johanson. In 1908 he began to study etching and 1909 he returned to Europe for more study.
 
Dahlgreen was a member of the Art Students League of Chicago, the Chicago Society of Etchers, the Chicago Painters and Sculptors, the Oak Park Art League, the Chicago Galleries Association and the Brown County Art Gallery Association.
 
Dahlgreen’s first visit to Brown County was in 1914 and he spent much time there working en plein air. He also worked in intaglio and monotype. He had a strong sense of design and the ability to convey the nuances of nature. Dahlgreen’s success as an etcher and landscape painter can be seen in the many awards he earned beginning in 1915 with an honorable mention awarded at the Panama Pacific Exposition where more than thirty of his prints were on display.
 
At the time of his death in Oak Park in 1955, Dahlgreen had spent fifty years as an artist working and teaching in and around Chicago. So fond was he of Brown County that he requested his ashes to be spread there near his favorite tree, a white oak that had been the subject of his painting.