Oscar Brousse Jacobson

Class of

1949

Oscar Brousse Jacobson

Class of 1949

“[His] was a self-stated devotion to ‘interpret the grandeur of the Southwest’ in the vivid simplicity of his sweeping style.”

Marion Jackson, 1973

Biography

Dr. Oscar Brousse Jacobson was born in Sweden and came to the United States with his parents and settled in Kansas in 1890. He studied art under the direction of the distinguished painter, Birger Sandzen, at Bethany College in Lindsborg and was working on the police force at the World’s Fair in St. Louis when he traded the post for one as art attaché to the Royal Swedish Commission at the Fair. After receiving a bachelor of painting degree at Bethany College in 1908, he taught art in colleges in Minnesota and Washington and studied at the Louvre in Paris in 1915 before earning a fine arts degree from Yale University and coming to the University of Oklahoma (1915-1945). He remained at OU as the director of its Museum of Art until his retirement in 1952. In 1953, OU named the Art Museum Jacobson Hall in his honor. Jacobson also co-authored Kiowa Indian Art with his wife and wrote a French work, Les Peintres Indiens D’Amerique, in 1950. In 1987 the Jacobson Foundation was created to honor the man and created a non-profit educational organization to encourage and promote Native American art.

Fun fact

Dr. Oscar Jacobson was a world renowned artist with some 500 works premiering in public and private collections across the U.S. and in India, Australia, France, and his native Sweden.

Oklahoma connections

Jacobson came to the University of Oklahoma in 1915 as the director of the School of Art.

Hometown

Norman

Profession

Artist, Educator

Presenter

Born

1882

Died

1966

Relevant Exhibits

Culture on the Prairie

This exhibit features ten Oklahoma Hall of Fame inductees whose civic contributions defined Oklahoma’s early cultural community and helped establish many of Oklahoma’s museums during the twentieth century.