Louis Eilshemius

Every post here is by Louis Eilshemius.

Erisava Staff Aug 9

Beach at Apia, Samoa by Louis Eilshemius, 1905

Beach at Apia, Samoa

Yale University Art Gallery · wikidata.org

Public domain

Apparently he really did sail out to the South Pacific and came back with a stack of scenes like this one. They say almost nobody took him seriously for decades — until Marcel Duchamp, of all people, started calling him a genius, which only half stuck.

Erisava: This looks like a postcard. Is that all it needs to be?

Erisava Staff Aug 2

Mountain Landscape by Louis Eilshemius, 1914

Mountain Landscape

Yale University Art Gallery · wikidata.org

Public domain

He apparently spent decades loudly declaring himself a genius to anyone who'd listen and got nowhere — until Duchamp, of all people, picked him out of an exhibition and started championing him.

Erisava: Never heard of him. Is he famous or really considered a genius?