Charles Waltensperger
Waltensperger was born in Detroit in 1870, and was educated in Detroit at the Julius Melchers School and at the Art Scool of the Detroit Museum of Art under Joseph Gies. Waltensperger recieved the first two-year James C. Scripps Scholarship from the Museum Schoo on 1890. This enabled him to spend two years studying in Paris at the Julien Academy with Benjamin Constant and Jean Paul Laurens. After returning to Detroit from Europe, he worked as a commerical artist for the Detroit Free Press and as a designer for the Calvert Lithographing Company. For a time he also illustrated books by C.B. Lewis, a well-known humorist, but later abandoned commerical art to work seriously in oils. His repeated visits to Laaren, Holland, are reflected in the Dutch interior scenes for which he was well known. Waltensperger also painted costal scenes, portraits, and crayon and pastel figural studies. He was a member of the Scarab Club. His work is in the collections of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Louvre in Paris, and the Detroit Institute of Art.