Oscar Fehrer (American, 1872–1958)
Head of a Woman, ca. 1897
Charcoal on paper
Signed lower right: O. Fehrer
Gift of Catherine Fehrer
2001.2

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Fehrer was an excellent draftsman and painted figural subjects, portraits, and landscape. He received his first training at the National Academy of Design (1892–95), where he won the Bronze Elliot Medal for figure drawing in Day Class. In 1895, he enrolled at the Royal Academy in Munich, where he began a series of charcoal drawing of portrait heads, and then in 1897 he left for Paris and studied at the Académie Julian for a year. Back in New York in 1900, Fehrer established a studio there in 1903, but returned again to Munich in 1910 where he stayed until the outbreak of WWI in 1914, when he settled in New York City.