Willemina Ogterop Explained

Willemina Ogterop
Birth Date:1881
Death Date:1974
Nationality:Dutch-American
Field:stained glass

Willemina Ogterop (1881–1974) was a Dutch-American artist and stained glass window designer of almost 500 windows in 80 locations.[1] She was the first woman west of the Mississippi to be inducted into the stained-glass artists’ union. [2]

Biography

Ogterop was born in Maastricht in the Netherlands in 1881. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam before going to South Africa at the age of 21. In Africa she met her future husband, and they were married in Java and lived in India and Sri Lanka, historically known as Ceylon, before returning to the Netherlands where their four children were born.[3] The family came to California in 1918 and lived for ten years on a ranch near Santa Cruz. She worked in the Cummings Art Glass Studio in San Francisco as their principal designer from 1928 to 1953,[4] designing nearly 500 stained glass windows, and creating more than 200 works of art in other media.

There are more than 80 venues, primarily Christian churches, in six states of the US which contain her stained glass works; however, the great majority of her windows are in 40 cities and towns in California, in addition to a total of 9 churches in the states of Nevada, Washington, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Louisiana. She donated three works of art to India, two of which can be found on public display: the woodcarving "Satyagraha" in the National Gandhi Museum in New Delhi[5] and a stained glass plaque depicting a poem in Sanskrit by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, which is in the Tagore Museum at Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, Bolpur, West Bengal, India.[6]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Willemina Ogterop. Oakland Wiki. 22 December 2017.
  2. Web site: July 18, 2024 . Preservation - Interfaith Center at the Presidio . https://web.archive.org/web/20231104234955/https://www.interfaithpresidio.org/preservation.html . November 4, 2023 . July 18, 2024 . Interfaith Center at the Presidio.
  3. News: Stull . Carolyn . August 22, 1948 . Ogterop is Master of an Ancient Art . San Francisco Chronicle, August 22, 1948.
  4. Web site: Krimgold. Eveline Ogterop. Willemina Ogterop: Stained Glass Artist. First Congregational Church of Oakland, CA. 22 December 2017.
  5. Web site: July 17, 2024 . ENTRANCE GALLERY . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20240717235504/https://www.gandhimuseum.org/museum/index.php/galleries/entrance-gallery . July 17, 2024 . July 17, 2024 . gandhimuseum.org.
  6. Web site: VISVA-BHARATI NEWS . dead . https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.95163/page/n97/mode/2up . January 21, 2017 . August 20, 2024 . Internet Archive.