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Stirling C. Westerlund

Stirling C. Westerlund
(1904-1944)

Stirling C. Westerlund was born in Henry County, Illinois on March 20, 1904, and migrated to Southern California with his family in 1919. The Westerlund family; which included young Stirling, his father, mother and two sisters; established residence in a home on Atlantic Avenue in Long Beach. Upon receiving a scholarship in Design at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco, Stirling moved to the Bay Area in 1922, and then ultimately to Manhattan in 1925 where he enrolled in the Art Students' League of New York to continue his artistic education through the patronage of his father.

From 1925 to 1927, Stirling participated in drawing and painting classes at the Art Students' League instructed by such luminaries as Thomas Hart Benton and Max Weber, with whom he was noted to have socialized outside of the classroom. Westerlund's works were included in the school's catalogs for the 1925-26 and 1926-27 school years.

After completing his course work at the Art Students' League, where he was named a member of their Board of Control, Stirling was sent to the Fontainebleau School of the Fine Arts in France to study fresco painting and architecture. While in France, Westerlund frequently visited the Louvre Museum in Paris and on occasion would set up an easel in the museum and spend hours painstakingly recreating selected works by old masters. He also toured the grand cities of Europe and the European countryside capturing a variety of scenes in watercolor.

On his return to the United States he moved to Phoenix where he exhibited paintings in the Arizona State Fair; but the stock market crash of 1929 dashed his hopes of making a living as a muralist and forced him to return to Long Beach to live again in his parents' home. In spite of his education, tremendous talent and passion for art, it seemed that Westerlund would have to settle for showing his work in local exhibitions. He ultimately took on a role as a resident art expert, and as a painter of local scenery and portraits of friends and family members. Ellen, the younger of his two sisters, subject of some of his finest works, and confidant throughout his life, would eventually take both Stirling and his artwork under her wing until his death of unknown causes at the age of 40 in 1944.

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