| Morning in the Swamp,
Bayou Teche Meyer Strauss (1831-1905) 1884 oil on canvas |
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| Morning in the Swamp,
Bayou Teche Meyer Strauss (1831-1905) 1884 oil on canvas |
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| Among the museum’s
most recent painting acquisition is Morning in the
Swamp, Bayou Teche which depicts black workers
gathering moss into a boat in the midst of the swamp.
Beginning in the 1870s, moss was sold commercially as
padding for furniture, mattresses and upholstered
automobile and train seats. The moss industry prospered
in Louisiana well into the mid twentieth century. Primarily a painter of theatric scenes, Meyer Strauss also established a career as a landscape painter. From 1869 to 1872, Strauss lived in New Orleans and painted theatrical backdrops for many of the local theaters, while he exhibited his landscapes at Wagener and Meyer’s. By 1884, Straus had settled in San Francisco and returned briefly to New Orleans in 1885, where he won a prize for a landscape painting at the World’s Industrial Cotton Centennial Exposition. |