D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 1
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I
NDEED, ONE OF THE BIG SKY'S MOST DAZ-
ZLING TALENTS was a contemporary and friend
of Russell's, and he even lived in Great Falls.
While Olaf Carl Seltzer's paintings were gener-
ally overlooked, he could perhaps even be consid-
ered the foremost product of the Russell school.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt possessed a
canvas by Seltzer. Lauritz Melchior, the great Dan-
ish-American opera singer, and publisher George
Palmer Putnam and his most famous wife, Amelia
Earhart, also owned his originals. The dynamic
aviatrix asked him to execute designs for envelopes
to be carried on her flight across the Pacific. These
she sent to Roosevelt and the Postmaster General
and other celebrities.
Seltzer was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in
1877, with artistically-inclined lineage. His father,
Carl Seltzer, worked in cut glass. Olaf's abilities
as an artist were noticed while he was still a child
and he was allowed to study in the Art Institute
in Copenhagen. While Olaf was still in his early
teens, his father died. He, his mother and her sister
left Denmark to join the sister's husband, in Great
Falls, Montana. He went to work on a railroad, and
then landed a job at a silver smelter and later for a
few livestock operations in Great Falls.
Seltzer and Charles Russell met on the latter's
thirty-third birthday, March 19, 1897, and, accord-
ing to Seltzer's later account, "instantly liked one
OLAF (O.C)
SELTZER
(1877-1957)
