PortraitThe Silenced War Whoop by Charles Schreyvogel
Charles Schreyvogel (January 4, 1861 – January 27, 1912) was an American painter of Western subject matter in the days of the disappearing frontier. Schreyvogel was especially interested in military life.
Life
My Bunkie by Charles Schreyvogel, 1899, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
He was born in Hoboken, New Jersey to Paul and Theresa Schreyvogel,[1] and grew up in a poor family of German immigrant shopkeepers on the Lower East Side of New York. Schreyvogel was unable to afford art classes and he taught himself to draw.
When Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West show came to Brooklyn in 1894, Schreyvogel visited to sketch.[2] He went on to become famous for his depictions of the American West, although he did much of his work in his studio (or its rooftop) in decidedly non-Western Hoboken.[3]
In 1901, his painting My Bunkie was awarded the Thomas Clarke Prize at the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design.[4] He suddenly became recognized and earned what seemed like overnight fame.
James D. Horan. The Life And Art Of Charles Schreyvogel: Painter-Historian Of The Indian-Fighting Army Of The American West. New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1969.
Rick Stewart. The American West: Legendary Artists of the Frontier. Hawthorne Publishing Company, 1986.
^Hughes, Robert. "How The West Was Spun", Time, May 13, 1991. Accessed August 14, 2007. "It is of Charles Schreyvogel, a turn-of-the- century Wild West illustrator, painting in the open air. His subject crouches alertly before him: a cowboy pointing a six-gun. They are on the flat roof of an apartment building in Hoboken, N.J."
