Elmer Stanley Hader (American, 1889-1973)
 
This mountainside farmhouse landscape painting, oil on artist board panel, measures 12" x 16" or in the frame dimensions of 15" x 19" and is signed lower left Elmer Hader and inscribed “Elmer Stanley Hader” and titled verso “Mountainside Farmhouse”.
 
Biography:
Elmer Stanley Hader was born in 1889 in Pajaro, California but spent most of his youth in San Francisco. During the great earthquake and fire of 1906 he worked for the city in the National Guard. He attended the California School of Design in San Francisco from 1907-1910. In 1912 Hader attended the Julian Academy in Paris, France, paying his way through school working as a vaudevillian for two years. After serving in France during World War I, Hader moved to New York where he married artist Berta Hoerner on July 14, 1919.
 
Berta Hoerner Hader was born in 1891 in San Pedro, Coahuila, Mexico where her parents had undertaken a cotton growing venture. In 1894, the venture failing, her family moved to Parras, Mexico and later to Amarillo, Texas. After her father died when she was five years old, they moved to New York where she received most of her education. She began art classes and won several school literary and artistic prizes. In 1909, she moved with her mother and brother to Seattle, Washington where she attended the Washington School of Journalism and apprenticed at Western Engraving Company until 1912. It was here she learned fashion design and illustration. In 1915 she moved to San Francisco and worked in fashion illustration. While studying in Carmel, she shared a house with Rose Wilder Lane, Laura Ingalls Wilder's daughter, and was instrumental in getting Wilder's first "Little House" book published. Between 1915 and 1918 she attended the California School of Design. It was in San Francisco that she met her future husband, Elmer Hader.
 
The Haders began to illustrate feature pages for children in several leading magazines, including Good Housekeeping, McCall's, Pictorial Review, Century, and The Christian Science Monitor. This was the beginning of many years of collaboration. In 1927 and 1928 they illustrated and wrote seven small picture books called the "Happy Hours" books. Their first full- length book, The Picture Book of Travel, was published in 1928. In 1944, The Little Stone House, which detailed the building of their house in Nyack, New York, overlooking the Hudson River, was published. This home was the setting of the "Willow Hill" series of books, which depicted their love of animals and nature. In 1949 they won the Caldecott Medal for The Big Snow (1948) describing a great blizzard of January 1948.
The Haders continued writing and illustrating at their home until the mid- 1960s. As well as completing their own books, they also illustrated other's books. Either would suggest a plot and they both would plan it. One would start an illustration and the other would finish it. Pacifists and conservationists long before it was the fashion, their love of nature and animals is apparent in their work. They received the Caldecott Honor Book Award for Cock-a-doodle-doo in 1940 and for The Mighty Hunter in 1944, as well as for The Big Snow. Elmer Hader died in 1973, and Berta Hader died in 1976.