Louise Sarrazin-a
Louise Sarrazin (1888 - 1967)
Born New Orleans, Louisiana
Louise Sarrazin was an artist known for her Louisiana themes. Although born in the New Orleans area in 1888, she spent some of her early years wth her mother and siblings in Pascagoula, Mississippi; perhaps due to the death of her father in 1896. She returned to New Orleans by 1920 and remained single at least until 1930. She first married a Dr. Lewis of St. Francisville, West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, where she established a studio on the side of a road with a sign in the style of an artist's pallet bearing her name. Her third marriage was to Lawrence Nygard in about 1947, coincident with her move to Santa Clara County, California. She died in 1967 and is buried with her last husband in the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California. She had no children.
Artistically, she is known to have worked in watercolors and pen-and-ink drawings. She was proficient in watercolors at least since high school. She worked for a newspaper as an artist by 1920, and she provided the pen-and-ink illustrations for a book published in 1923.
By the late 1930s, she produced two different sets of postcards entitled "8 Pen and Ink Sketches" of Famous French Quarter Scenes, which sold for 25 cents per set and depicted courtyard and balcony views of New Orleans. A similar set of at least 3 cards of pen-and-ink drawings of historic West Feliciana Parish homes appeared in the 1940s. In 1950, Harmonson publishing in New Orleans reproduced her pen-and-ink series entitled Plantation Cabins, showing idyllic visions of rural African-American life. She carried this theme into her watercolors as well.