Birth Year : 1854
Death Year : 1924
Country : Germany
H. W. Hansen was born in Dithmarschen, Germany, and began his painting career in Hamburg, where he remained until 1876. He spent the next year in London and then emigrated to the United States, to Chicago, to study at the Art Institute. In 1882, he moved to California and settled in San Francisco. His interest in western life led to several sketching trips to various parts of the West. In 1901, at an exhibition of his paintings in San Francisco, his "The Pony Express", aroused considerable attention. In general, his paintings proved very popular among private collectors during the early 1900's. Principally a watercolorist, Hansen was especially given to painting horses. His work has often, and favorably, been compared to Remington's.
Hansen's work is illustrative, depicting lively figures set in typical western settings of open prairie and purple mesa. Whether in oil or in watercolors, details of costume are accurate, movement animated, facial expressions keenly expressive and landscape touches bright and naturalistic. Hansen's understanding and love of the wild outdoors of his adopted country helped to preserve landscapes and types of people in a kind of pictorial history for which we are all grateful. By the time of his death, in Oakland, California in 1924, the automobile had replaced the horse almost completely and the wide open spaces had begun to disappear.
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