George Bartlett, oil on artist board, 20 by 24 inches. Signed lower left.
George Bartlett, a reporter and feature writer for the St. Petersburg Times from 1944 to his retirement in 1964, was widely known in St. Petersburg, artistic, musical, and theatrical circles. Bartlett grew up in Racine, Wisconsin, attended the University of Wisconsin, where he was editor and cartoonist for the University newspaper, and began a life-long love affair with the banjo. Moving to Chicago in 1919 he attended the Art Institute of Chicago by day, playing his banjo professionally at Chicago hotels, night spots and county clubs at night.
In 1921 Bartlett took a job as a cowboy on a cattle train bound for California. In Hollywood he wrote scripts and advertising for RKO and a Los Angeles radio station. In a rented suit he crashed parties at the Beverly Hills Hotel and got to know Darryl F. Zanuck. Returning to Chicago Bartlett worked for an advertising agency and appeared on radio programs with Marion and Jim Jordan, a team later famous on the radio as Fibber McGee and Molly.
Bartlett’s parents began wintering in St. Petersburg in 1918. Visiting them in December 1919, when a meeting of interested citizens was held at the Huntington Hotel to organize an art club, the Art Club of St. Petersburg was founded with George Bartlett elected president.
In 1930, while attending Columbia University School of Journalism, Bartlett met Mrs. Margurite Blocker Holmes, the daughter of an early St. Petersburg settler, John C. Blocker Sr., who was also there to study journalism. In 1935 the couple were married and moved permanently to St. Petersburg.
In St. Petersburg Bartlett worked as program director for WTSP, then the St. Petersburg Times radio station, and in 1945, joined the newspaper as a reporter. In 1951 he took up oil painting seriously, studying at the Ringling School of Art, the Art Students League, the Instituto Allende, Mexico, and with Mark Dixon Dodd, George Snow Hill, Marion Terry, Janet King, and Robert Sprague. The September 1957 issue of Famous Artists Magazine, published by the Famous Artists Schools of Westport, Connecticut, carried a reproduction of Bartlett’s oil painting, Waterfront.
In his obituary in the St. Petersburg Times, May 2, 1977, staff writer Dick Bothwell said of Bartlett; “He was best known for his popular feature, ‘They Came Here to Live’ in which he skillfully profiled about 900 persons…. A blithe spirit who lived his life to the fullest…Bartlett enjoyed talking of his experiences as a young man in Chicago and Hollywood during the Roaring 20’s.”
Born: 1900, Dunkirk, New York. Died: May 1, 1977, St. Petersburg. Education: Art Institute of Chicago; Famous Artists Schools of Westport, Connecticut; Art Students League, New York; and in St. Petersburg Membership: Art Club of St. Petersburg; Florida Federation of Art. Exhibits: Art Club of St. Petersburg, Members’ Spring Exhibition, March 1953, oil, Still Life; Tampa Realistic Art Gallery, Davis Island Gallery, February 1957; St. Petersburg Times, annual exhibit, 1957, grand prize for Waterfront; Pinellas County Fair, 19577, 1st prize in oils; Art Club of St. Petersburg, one man show, 1957; Florida Federation of Art, 32nd Annual Exhibition, November 13-28, 1958, Daytona Beach, oil, Midway; Pinellas County Fair, Largo, February 1959, honorable mention, oil; Florida Federation of Art 33rd Annual Exhibition, Tampa, November 1959, multi-media, Lanterns; Art Club of St. Petersburg, Members’ Jury Show, February 1960, honorable mention, mixed media, Harbor Lights.
