George Emerick Essig was born in Philadelphia and reputedly studied with the marine painters James Hamilton (1819–1878) and Edward Moran (1829–1901). He also became a specialist in marine scenes and often painted the New Jersey coast. Essig exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1876 to 1888. He moved to Atlantic City, possibly around 1880, and practiced dentistry in Ventnor. Paintings by him once hung in Dennis Hotel and Chalfont-Haddon Hall in Atlantic City. Essig’s primary medium was watercolor, but in the late 1880s and early ’90s he made etchings that were usually based on the subjects of his paintings. Some sources give his death date as 1919, but his headstone in West Laurel Hill Cemetery in Bala Cynwyd PA lists 1923. A large number of Essig’s works are owned by the Reading Public Museum and Art Gallery in Reading, Pennsylvania.