226 N Washington St
New Ulm, MN 56073, USA

Minnesota Historic Homes National Registry Queen Anne Victorian

This fascinating Queen Anne Victorian home was built in 1894 by Anton Gag as the beginning of what would become a large family of seven children with his second wife Lizzie.Anton was born in Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) in 1858, and was 14 years old when he immigrated to the United States with his parents, sister and brother-in-law, and older brother Joseph in 1873. His eldest sister had arrived three years earlierand was settled in Cottonwood Township, just outside of New Ulm. While his mother moved to live with her daughter, Anton lived with his brother in St. Paul until 1979 when he moved to New Ulm. Known as an artist, Antonbecame the protege of August Schell, founder of Schell Brewery and leader of the Turnverein, the German fraternal organization that comprised of the whos who of New Ulm. Apparently he showed so much promise as an artist that Schell sent him to art school in Chicago and Milwaukee. He married his first wife in 1886, but sadly she passed away 13 months after the wedding, as did his infant daughter a month later. Anton was by this time a respected artist, having a photographic studio to earn income. He also painted landscapes, portraits, and still lifes. Living in an area with strong German-Bohemian immigrant influence, as well as daily influence of old customs, folk songs, and German, his art was greatly influenced by his Bohemian background. His painting, Attack on New Ulm During the Sioux Outbreak was painted in 1904 and hangs in the State Capitol in St. Paul. Artistry and creativity ran in the family, especially in his eldest daughter Wanda. After graduating from New Ulm High in 1912, she went on to study art in St. Paul, Minneapolis, and New York. She eventually became a world-famous watercolor painter and print-maker after a stint in commercial art. Maybe you are familiar with her most famous book, Millions of Cats , written in 1928. It holds the title as the oldest American picture book still in print. Her youngest sister, Falvia, also became an author and illustrator of 8 childrens books and specialized in watercolor paintings. (To learn more about the family of artists, visit the local website ) As for the house, it was sold when Lizzie Gag died in 1918. It languished over the years and six owners until it was purchased by the Wanda Gag House Association in 1988. Over a period of 20 years, it wasrestored to its early 1900s appearance inside and out. Original stenciling in the dining room and parlor have been uncovered, and the exterior colors have been matched to the documented original colors. It was placed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1979, before restoration. Today it is an interpretive center and museum dedicated to the artistic legacy of the Gag family which the public can tour and visit.

Wanda Gág

Wanda Hazel Gág (March 11, 1893 – June 27, 1946) was an American artist, author, translator, and illustrator. She is best known for writing and illustrating the children's book Millions of Cats, the oldest American picture book still in print. Gág was also a noted printmaker, receiving international recognition and awards. Growing Pains, a book of excerpts from the diaries of her teen and young adult years, received widespread critical acclaim. Two of her books were awarded Newbery Honors and two received Caldecott Honors.

Early Years
Wanda Hazel Gag was born March 11, 1893, in the German-speaking community of New Ulm, Minnesota to Elisabeth Biebl Gag and the artist and photographer Anton Gag. The eldest of the seven Gag children, Wanda was 15 when her father died of tuberculosis. His final words to her were: "Was der Papa nicht thun konnt', muss die Wanda halt fertig machen." (What Papa couldn't do, Wanda will have to finish.) Following Anton's death, the Gag family was on welfare and some townspeople thought that Wanda should quit high school and get a steady job to help support her family. Despite this pressure, Wanda continued with her high school education. While still a teenager her illustrated story Robby Bobby in Mother Goose Land was published in The Minneapolis Journal in their Junior Journal supplement. After graduating in June 1912 she taught country school in Springfield, Minnesota, from November 1912 to June 1913.

Art School
In 1913 Gág began a platonic relationship with University of Minnesota medical student Edgar T. Herrmann who exposed her to new ideas in art, politics and philosophy. With a scholarship (and the aid of friends), she attended The Saint Paul School of Art in 1913 and 1914. From 1914 to 1917 she attended The Minneapolis School of Art under the patronage of Herschel V. Jones. While there, she became friends with Harry Gottlieb and Adolf Dehn. Her first illustrated book commission (as Wanda Gäg) was A Child’s Book of Folk-Lore— Mechanics of Written English by Jean Sherwood Rankin (1917).

New York
In 1917 Gág won a scholarship to the Art Students League of New York where she took classes in composition, etching and advertising illustration. By 1919 Gág was earning her living as a commercial illustrator. During her time in New York she became a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists. In 1921 she became a partner in a business venture called Happiwork Story Boxes. The boxes were decorated with story panels on its sides. An illustration of Gág's was published in Broom: An International Magazine of the Arts in 1921. Gág's art exhibition in the New York Public Library in 1923 was her first solo show. She began signing her name "Gág" around this time.

In 1924 Gág's work was published in a short-lived folio-style magazine with artist William Gropper. In 1925 she created a series of illustrated crossword puzzles for children that was syndicated in several newspapers. Gág's one-woman-show in the Weyhe Gallery in 1926 led to her being acclaimed as "… one of America’s most promising young graphic artists… " and was the start of a lifelong relationship with its manager, Carl Zigrosser. Gág began to sell her lithographs, linoleum block prints, water colors and drawings through the gallery.

In 1927 her article These Modern Women: A Hotbed of Feminists was published in The Nation, drawing the attention of Alfred Stieglitz and prompting Egmont Arens to write: "The way you solved that problem (her relationship with men) seems to me to be the most illuminating part of your career. You have done what all the other ‘modern women’ are still talking about." Gág’s illustrations were published on the covers of the leftist magazines The New Masses and The Liberator.

In 1928 Gág hand-colored some of Rockwell Kent's illustrations in a limited edition of Candide. In a 1929 New York Times review, Elisabeth Luther Cary described Gág's print Stone Crusher: "Pure imagination leaps out from dusky shadows and terrifies with light, an emotional source difficult to analyze." Her work was recognized internationally and was selected for inclusion in the American Institute of Graphic Arts Fifty Prints of the Year in 1928, 1929, 1931, 1932, 1936, 1937 and 1938. In 1939 Gág's work was shown at The Museum of Modern Art exhibition Art in Our Time and at the New York World's Fair American Art Today show.

Works for Children
In 1927 Gág's illustrated story Bunny's Easter Egg was published in John Martin's Book, a magazine for children. Gág's work caught the attention of Ernestine Evans, director of Coward-McCann's children's book division. Evans was delighted to learn that Gág had children's stories and illustrations in her folio and asked her to submit her own story with illustrations. The result, Millions of Cats, had been developed from a story that Gág had written to entertain the children of friends. It was published in 1928. Anne Carroll Moore wrote: "… It bears all the hallmarks of becoming a perennial favorite among children, and it takes a place of its own, both for the originality and strength of its pictures and the living folk-tale quality of its text. A book of universal interest to children living anywhere in the world." Millions of Cats is on the New York Public Library's list of 100 Great Children's Books.

In 1935 Gág published the "proto-feminist" Gone is Gone; or, the Story of a Man Who Wanted to Do Housework.

To encourage the reading of fairy-tales, Gág translated and illustrated Tales from Grimm in 1936. English critic Humbert Wolfe, commenting on Gág's translation, wrote: "From the very first page it was clear that Miss Gág was chopping away a perfect brushwood of clumsy phraseology to let in the light." Two years later she translated and illustrated the Grimm story Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in reaction to the "trivialized, sterilized, and sentimentalized" Disney movie version.[37] Her essay I Like Fairy Tales was published in the March 1939 issue of The Horn Book Magazine. More Tales from Grimm was published posthumously in 1947. Four of her translated fairy tales were later released with illustrations by Margot Tomes.

Awards
The books Millions of Cats and The ABC Bunny were recipients of a Newbery Honor. Both Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Nothing at All received a Caldecott Honor. Wanda was posthumously honored with The Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1958 and The Kerlan Award in 1977. The Wanda Gág Read Aloud Book Award is awarded each year by the University of Minnesota, Moorhead. In 2018, Gág was posthumously honored with The Museum of Illustration at the Society of Illustrators Original Art Lifetime Achievement Award.