10 Facts About Pop Hart

George Overbury "Pop" Hart was an early 20th century American painter and watercolorist.

Pop Hart's father managed a printing roller factory, and Hart worked there for a time in his teens but lost the job due to an explosion that took place when he was off sketching instead of watching the glue vats.

Pop Hart set up a studio in Coytesville, a neighborhood in Fort Lee, New Jersey, but he spent much of the 1920s traveling again.

Pop Hart died in 1933 in Coytesville, where he had lived in poor health during his last years.

From his early travels onward, Pop Hart worked often in the highly portable medium of watercolor, and he developed a loose, vigorous style that eventually attracted the attention of Knoedler Gallery in New York, which gave him his first show.

Pop Hart painted seaside and marine subjects near his studio in Coytesville, New Jersey, as well as a wide range of other subjects including animals, botanical studies, nudes, and landscapes.

Pop Hart continued to work in watercolor as well as gouache and was considered one of the leading watercolor artists of his day.

Pop Hart was awarded a bronze metal at the Sesquicentennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1926, and in 1935 the Newark Museum mounted a memorial retrospective exhibition of his work.

Pop Hart's work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics.

Pop Hart's work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Brooklyn Museum; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Smithsonian Institution; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the British Museum, and other institutions in the United States and Europe.