About the Artist:

Josef Frank Froula was an American painter, engraver, and art teacher associated with the Chicago art community of the early twentieth century. Born in Chicago in 1887 to Emanuel and Marie Pokorny Froula, he studied in the evening program at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1900 to 1903 and again from 1907 to 1908. By 1910, Froula was working professionally as an artist in a Chicago engraving house, and later records identify him variously as a commercial artist, engraver, painter, and teacher.

Froula specialized primarily in landscapes and became particularly noted for winter and snow scenes. During the 1910s he traveled to the Ozarks, where he spent considerable periods painting the landscape of the White River hills. On one such trip, he reportedly returned to Chicago with thirty-five canvases. He also painted extensively in Indiana, and his work reflects the broader interest among Midwestern artists of the period in depicting the rural landscape directly from nature.

In 1928, a Cedar Rapids exhibition presented sixty landscape paintings by Froula and fellow Chicago artist Anthony Buchta, while Froula later exhibited at the Hoosier Salon in 1934 and 1936. He was a member of Chicago's Palette & Chisel Club and the Bohemian Arts Club, organizations that played important roles in the city's community of working artists.

Froula remained closely associated with the Midwestern landscape throughout his career. His paintings are characterized especially by rural scenery, waterways, wooded landscapes, and snow-covered terrain. He died in Norwood Park, Illinois, in 1939.