Edgar Leeteg

Edgar William Leeteg (April 13, 1904 East St. Louis, Illinois – February 7, 1953 Papeete, Tahiti) was an American painter often considered the father of American velvet painting. He became a French citizen after immigrating to French Polynesia in 1933, where he spent the rest of his life painting the local life on black velvet.

Leeteg was the son of a butcher and the grandson of a German grave sculptor. His great-grandfather was an architect; the name was originally Lütig. When he was sixteen he went to work for his uncle in Little Rock, Arkansas, and later worked picking cotton in Louisiana, as foundry worker in Illinois, a cowboy in Texas and odd jobs in Alaska. At the age of 22, Leeteg worked as a billboard painter and sign writer for a large outdoor advertising company, Foster & Kleiser, in Sacramento, California, before the depression made conditions difficult. He was foreman with the company, and the other workers resented him, work being limited. They felt that since he was a bachelor (he had been married twice), their economic needs exceeded his. He had been to Tahiti on vacation in 1930 and when a contact there invited him to return with a job offer, he accepted it, after discussing the economic problems in the US with his mother Bertha (who agreed that prospects were dismal). With a small inheritance from his grandfather in Germany, Leeteg and his mother moved to Tahiti in 1933 with a few brushes and some paint stolen from the sign company. At first he worked as a sign-painter for theatres and cinemas but barely made a living. His mother ran a restaurant, but went broke and returned to the US. Edgar stayed and took whatever work he could find. Using the island women as models, he sold paintings to bars and visiting tourists. He tried various media including wood and cloth, but finally settled on black velvet with astounding success.

When he had sufficient funds, he returned to the US to fetch his mother who lived with him in French Polynesia for the rest of his life. While back from Tahiti, he worked as a sign painter in Honolulu where he won first prize at the Hawaiian Orchid Fanciers' Show for an oil painting of orchids. Leeteg obtained a patron, Wayne Decker, almost by accident. Decker saw a painting of Hilo Hattie on black velvet in a shop in the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, but when he returned some months later, the painting was gone. The shopkeeper could not remember the name of the artist. Almost a year later, he and his family were in Tahiti and saw some Leeteg paintings in a tourist shop including his now famous Hina Rapa. The Deckers arranged to meet Leeteg and paid him to paint six paintings for them. After the commissioned paintings arrived at their home in Salt Lake City, they made a deal with Leeteg to paint at least ten paintings a year for them. The deal lasted until Leeteg's death and the Deckers accumulated more than two hundred of Leeteg's velvet paintings. It was the Deckers' financial support that ensured Leeteg's economic survival, but it was Honolulu art dealer Bernard ("Barney") Davis who would make him famous.

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