When she was only 18 years old, my grandmother, Georgie Robertson Nadler, began illustrating for Louisiana State University’s Gumbo yearbook, which she continued for three years. She probably had artistic training at Baton Rouge High School and Louisiana Normal School. In St. Joseph, Louisiana, she taught art and music for a short time before marrying Harry Nadler. Georgie continued capturing colorful, tropical flowers, still lifes, and family portraits on canvas until a stroke in her 80s robbed her of her artistic ability.
We remember her flamboyant nature, long cigarette holders, mink fur stoles, and Mardi Gras parties in her St. Charles Avenue apartment in New Orleans.
Much can be learned from her drawings in the LSU Gumbo yearbooks. From clothing fashions of the day to attitudes about women attending the university (see first image on the sixth row) to the mystical perceptions of fraternities, her sketches represent an era of gradual modernization.
MANY THANKS! We inherited much more than the DNA of Georgie Robertson Nadler!
Joanna Nadler Worrell
Pingback: Paintings by Georgie Robertson Nadler, b.1890 – d.1984 – E. B. Shelton