Herman C. Frieseke / Frederick Carl Frieseke

Herman C. Frieseke built this house in 1872. The bricks used were from the tile and brick factory that he and his brother Julius had opened in 1865 beside the tracks of the Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railroad. Herman’s son, Frederick Carl, who became a painter of the French Impressionist School, was born on April 7, 1874, and spent his childhood in this house. He died in France in 1939. One of his paintings, “Lady with a Sunshade,” dedicated to the memory of his grandmother, Valetta Gould Graham, hangs in the Owosso Public Library. Frederick Carl Frieseke Born in Owosso, Frederick Carl Frieseke studied art at the Chicago Art Institute and the Art Students’ League in New York before moving to France in 1898. Early in his career, Frieseke painted murals for Philadelphia and New York department store owner Rodman Wanamaker, who became his patron. In France, Frieseke, an impressionist, painted the landscapes, garden scenes, and figures of his home in Giverny, Normandy. Frieseke exhibited selected paintings at the Paris Salon and won many awards, including a gold medal at the International Exhibition in Munich in 1904.