B. G. Seielstad

I've no idea how, but I managed to accidentally delete a load of files off my desktop the other day. Mostly unimportant, as far as I can tell, although one is going to take a while to reconstruct. Anyway, it meant that I was looking at some of the random scans I had sitting on my desktop, which included the above. It's something I scanned from Modern Wonder (11 June 1938) recently. The artist was the oddly named B. G. Seielstad, a name I struggled to find in any UK database. It took a while to sink in that Seielstad could an American artist and the article maybe a reprint.

Once I'd cottoned onto that idea, it didn't take too long to find out that his full name was Benjamin Goodwin Seielstad, born on 23 December 1886. He was the son of Peter O. Sielestad, who immigrated to the USA from Norway in 1865 and became a farmer; his wife Sarah (nee Benson) immigrated to the USA in 1872. In 1910, the family were living in Minneola, Goodhue, Minnesota.

He was married to Nathalie around 1912 and had a daughter, Lucile, born in Los Angeles, California, on 28 January 1914. Around that time, Seielstad was working for the Los Angeles Examiner as an illustrator. He later also worked for the Los Angeles Times.

I haven't been able to find him in the 1920 census, although his wife and daughter were living in Los Angeles with his wife's mother, Julia A. Pomeroy. In 1930 he and his family were living in Stewart Manor, Nassau Co., New York, and his occupation was magazine artist. He was a member of the Illustrators Club of New York City.

Seielstad died after a long illness in Los Angeles on 1 July 1960, aged 73.