Carl Dahlgren (1841-1920)

Painter, illustrator. Born in Skelsior, Denmark on March 12, 1841. After serving in the Danish Army during the Austro-Prussian War, Dahlgren enrolled at the Copenhagen Academy of Arts and studied privately with Carsten Henreksen.
He and his brother, Marius, immigrated to Salt Lake City in 1872. There he found work as an artist-draftsman for the Surveyor Generals office and later opened an art school. In 1878 he moved to San Francisco where he opened a studio and became an active member of the San Francisco Art Assn.

Shortly after arriving, he wed and made his home in Oakland. For years his illustrations appeared in “Californian” magazine.

Primarily a landscapist, he also painted genre, portraits, and a series of San Francisco street scenes following the disaster of 1906. Carl was known as the Sunshine Painter due to a shaft of sunlight often found in his works.