Othmar Hoffler

Studied at Academy Colarossi and Academy Grande Chaumiere, Paris, France. Member Chicago Gal. Assn., Palette and Chisel Academy. FA, Illinois Acadamy FA, Hoosier Salon, Brown County Art Gallery Assn. De Paul University. Exhibited: Palette and Chisel Academy, Albright Art Gallery (Prize), 1933,1939

Saddle and Sirloin Club 1

A series of biographical sketches of the 347 personalities honored by having their portraits hung in the Saddle and Sirloin gallery at the Kentucky Exposition Center, Louisville, Kentucky. The collection remembers the 347 leaders who have made major contributions to the livestock industry. Founded in 1903 and continues to this day, the portrait gallery is the largest collection of quality portraits by noted artists in the world devoted to a single industry.

All of the portraits hanging in the Club at the time of the 1934 Chicago Stock Yards fire were destroyed. Within a week after the fire, Fredrick H. Prince, the chairman of the Union Stock Yards and Transit Company, commissioned Robert F. Grafton (also in the University Museums permanent collection) to begin repainting the portraits lost. In 18 months, before his death, he completed a total of 164. Othmar Hoffler was selected to succeed him as the official artist of the Club. Other artists whose portrait works are represented in the gallery include Joseph Allworthy, Arvid Nyholm, Benjamin Kanne and Ernest Klempner. More recently portraits by Raymond Kinstler, Tom Orlando, Tom Phillips, Stewart Halstead, Walter Wilson, Richard Halstead, James Fox, John Boyd Martin and Istvan Nyikos have been added.

Stepping in after Grafton’s death was Othmar

Hoffler, who painted seventy-eight Saddle &

Sirloin portraits from the mid-1930s through

the early 1950s, an average of four or five per

year. Four of those were post-fire replacements.

Seventy-five Hofflers remain in the collection

today. Born in Buffalo, New York, where he

attended the Art School of the Buffalo Fine

Arts Academy, Hoffler had settled in Chicago

by 1930. He was active at the School of the

Art Institute of Chicago and in the Palette and

Chisel Club, earning the club’s Gold Medal in

1930 and serving as an officer in 1935. Most of

his documented works are portraits, including

five presidents of Iowa State University