Anton Gág

Anton Gag (12 June 1859 – 22 May 1908) was a Sudeten-American painter and studio photographer known for his portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and murals. Immigrating to the United States at the age of 14 with his family in 1873, he later settled in New Ulm, Minnesota, where he spent most of his working life.

Together with other local painters, Gag decorated altars and walls of several churches in the area. He and a partner also produced a large panorama with eleven panels on the Dakota War of 1862. One of his paintings of the Battle of New Ulm hung in the Minnesota Capitol building until its removal in 2016.

Biography

Anton Gag (also spelled "Gaag") was born in 1859 as the last of five children in his family in Walk (now Valcha), a hamlet of 15 homes, which is part of today's Stráž in western Bohemia, Austrian Empire (now Czech Republic). The family were Sudeten German Catholics. His father George Gaag was a wood craftsman and his mother Theresia Hamperl-Heller (b. 1821) was the legitimized daughter of a sheepherder.

His family immigrated to the United States in 1873, when Gaag was 14; his older sister had earlier emigrated there. Their infant daughter died a month later.

In 1892 the young widower Gag married Elizabeth (known as Lissi) Biebl of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, whose family had migrated to Minnesota. They were well-educated immigrants from Kscheutz (Ksire), Bohemia. Lissi had worked as his assistant in his photography studio. The exterior of the house has been restored to the original colors of the period when the Gag family lived there, including Wanda after her parents died. The interior is also being restored to that time period. The process has uncovered detailed, decorative hand-painting done by Gag and Wanda on walls throughout the house.