“Fido Can Set Vp!” (Wo. 2) Possibly the most famous of Otis’s works in the classic genre tradition, this brilliant commentary on the tiresome Dog-and-Master motif made the painter many enemies among dog lovers; yet he has declared that from none other of his paintings has he derived so much satisfaction. He has steadfastly refused to barter it. who had known Otis when he was our artist-in-residence. Mr. Lull got it from one of the wreckers who, naturally enough, were making sport of this early example of a new school soon to flower. The moment Miss Millsaps laid eyes on Portrait of an Aspiring Saint she determined that Mr. Otis should have the recognition so long delayed. And soon enough the painting occupied two columns in the newspaper’s house organ. At about this time Mr. Otis was made delirious with joy when Mr. Ernest Richardson, head of The Oregonian's art department, invited him to submit a painting to that newspaper’s annual intermural affair called the Salon Arts Independent. Otis fetched a picture so quickly as to make Mr. Richardson wonder if the impecunious artist had come in a taxicab. A few days later. Mr. Otis’s hand shook and his watery eyes overflowed when a friend showed him a copy of The Oregonian, and there was the Otis entry— “Fido Can Set Up!”—a genre work, magnificently displayed three columns wide and a good ten inches deep, on the front page of Section 2 of this great news organ. Hie dam had broken, the Otis cup ranneth over, Truth was not to be crushed. Though neither the local Art Museum nor any of the galleries around town The Ladder of Success; or, Horatio Alger, Jr., & The Buzzard Although a devout Alger fan, as is made clear by the aura surrounding the famous author in this painting, Mr. Otis, his great heart filled with compassion, nevertheless wished to warn the All-American Boy of the penalty of missteps on the path upward to Fame & Fortune. invited him to present a one-man show, the career of Otis from this point on has been a chronicle of heady success. Physicians, surgeons, attorneys, and a couple of businessmen began to haunt his atelier, to barter something useful for paintings. I neglected to mention that Otis had long since made it clear he did not want to sell his work, remarking that money was a delusion of paper symbols of no intrinsic value, even while its barter value grew less almost by the month. “I want goods,” he said. Professional women, society leaders, and art-minded housewives came to the Otis studio to look, and often to go away with a painting. A new Press Club did not forget the free-loader of old; the boys put the bite on Otis to turn moralist and fill a 4 x 6 foot vacant spot near the bar with a still life which the painter called City Editor with Bowl of Artichokes. Mr. Otis thoroughly enjoyed this his first mural work. “All that open space made me feel jim dandy,” he said. “It gave me BIG ideas.” He was soon doing two even larger murals in a Portland residence; and when Mr. Bennett Cerf, the New York publisher and noted TV personage, was visiting the city, he STEWART HOLBROOK By Peggy Lindquist and David Milholland loggers' Boswell.” At the end of the New England logging season, he bought a round-trip ticket to Victoria, B.C. and topped by his Boston-purchased bowler, headed west. The story goes that when Holbrook showed up at a B.C. logging camp wearing his derby, the operator was so amused, he gave him a job as “cheater" (time-keeper). In a gesture which in some ways sums up Holbrook’s relationship with the Northwest, he nailed his Boston bowler to a stump. After three years of working in and observing logging camp life, he sold his first story to Harold Ross (later editor of the New Yorker) for $5, and never ceased being the unlikely combination of logger and tewart Holbrook, in his lifetime the dean of Northwest authors, discovered the region he dubbed “the Far Corner” at the age of 27. Adventurous in his youth. Holbrook travelled throughout the continent, trying his hand at most everything. Over the next 44 years, he wrote about all he saw and experienced, both as a freelance writer and later as author of some 27 books, quite a few of them best sellers. They include a number of popular histories and several that celebrate the uniqueness of the big timber country. He was a man full of both conviction and contradiction. He loathed foul language. dogs, television (though he liked to watch the 'fights"), airplanes, the automobile and most of the creations of the twentieth century. He loved barbershop dered the only civilized way to travel, and his many dear friends. Holbrook was bom in Newport, Vermont, in 1893. At 18, he got a job with the Winnipeg Telegram as a reporter, and from there joined a theatre company on tour—“one of the lousiest stock companies ever formed”—where he struck up a life-long friendship with fellow troupe member Boris Karloff. Back in Vermont, Holbrook worked in a logging camp. Then in 1917, he joined the American Expeditionary Force and served in France. After the war, he was back at logging again, this time on the Connecticut River, an experience which later became Holy Old Mackinaw (his first best seller in 1939), and earned him the title of “the Photo courtesy of The Oregonian 30 Clinton St. Quarterly
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