Emil Janel

A still life painter, he is mainly known for his caricatures in the Scandinavian flat-plane style of woodcarving, and is considered by many to be one of the best of this genre.

[1] Emil Gottfred Janel was born in the village of Hansjö near Orsa in Dalarna County, Sweden.

After some encouragement by a local store keeper, he eventually settled in San Francisco with his wife and began study at what is now the San Francisco Art Institute.

During the 1930s, he spent considerable time at Russian River, where he produced carvings of a local species of Alder wood.

It is said that he preferred that particular medium because of the similarity to flesh tones, and that he kept his carvings in a bucket of water to keep them wet while working on them.