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Showing posts from October 22, 2017

LeRoy E. Greene (1893-1974) Montana Artist

Fame is fickle, many Montana artists have risen to national status, but few remain in the limelight. Greene established a following in his day, and is still collected by sophisticated collectors who like paintings that reflect the Montana landscape.  Owners like to point to their paintings and explain the location and the significance of Greene’s work. Greene was born in Dover, NJ, his father was an artist, who died when he was about eight years old. Like many children in that day with a deceased father, he quit school to go to work and got his first job as an errand boy for a jewelry firm in Newark.  Newark was a hotbed for the jewelry arts at that time.  In his twenties, he worked his way west arriving in Billings, MT in 1916, where he used his childhood job skills to land another job with a jewelry store. World War I came along and Greene was drafted.  Hoping to be sent overseas, instead the military used his jewelry skills to repair optical instruments, ending up in Frankf