Schreyvogel

Charles Schreyvogel Papers, circa 1880-1962
1.2 cubic feet (1 document box, 1 flat box, 2 oversized folders)
Location: 0330; Flat File 2/Drawer 3
Collection #: 043
Accession #: 1969.197.19

Introduction

Papers and photographs of artist Charles Schreyvogel, as preserved by his widow, Louise Walther Schreyvogel Feldmann, and his daughter, Ruth Elizabeth Schreyvogel Carothers; also includes some posthumous material about Schreyvogel and his art collected by Feldmann and Carothers. This small collection primarily documents the period when Schreyvogel was one of the most popular historical Western genre artists in America: from 1899, when he won the Clarke Prize for his painting “My Bunkie,” through his untimely death in 1912. Primary focuses of the collection are Schreyvogel’s career, his artwork and his relationships with some of the most prominent men and women of his time, including William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, Elizabeth B. Custer, Frederic Remington and Theodore Roosevelt. Collection photographs document Schreyvogel’s family and art career.

Biography

John A. Sleicher, editor of Leslie’s Weekly, in a letter to Charles Schreyvogel dated January 11, 1910 wrote, “The death of Remington leaves you unquestionably the greatest art in the line of work in which you have achieved such great success.” The “line of work” referred to was the painting of dramatic scenes from the frontier West, particularly conflicts between the U.S. Cavalry and Native Americans.

Charles Schreyvogel traces his ancestry to his grandfather Louis Erbe who escaped execution for dissident activities in Prussia by immigrating to the United States in 1848. Louis and his wife, Augusta, who settled in New York City, had a daughter named Teresa who married Paul Schreyvogel, a shopkeeper, on March 18, 1856. From this union Charles was born on January 4, 1861, who became the second of three sons, the others being Louis and Robert. While Schreyvogel was still very young, the family moved to Hoboken, New Jersey, which had a tightly knit German-American community.

Having worked as an office boy and apprenticed as a die-sinker for a pipe manufacturer, Schreyvogel became an apprentice in a lithography shop in the late 1870s. Around this time he met H. August Schwabe, president of the Newark Art League, who persuaded him to enroll in art classes at the Art League. By 1880 Schreyvogel was earning extra money by giving art lessons to others.

In the early 1880s Schwabe introduced Schreyvogel to Dr. William Redwood Fisher, an art enthusiast who recognized Schreyvogel’s talent and urged him to study in Europe. By 1883 Louis and Robert persuaded their reluctant brother to plan for European study and they agreed to pool their savings to help finance the venture. In 1886 Schreyvogel finally left for Munich to study under Karl von Marr and Frank Kirchbach at the Munich Art Academy for the next three years. Schreyvogel’s Aunt Amelia Ott, who lived in Stuttgart, provided sporadic financial assistance.

In 1890 Schreyvogel returned to Hoboken suffering from chronic asthma attacks and generally poor health. While doctors advised him to seek the dryness of the West, Schreyvogel established his studio in Hoboken and eked out a living painting portraits, ivory miniatures and sketches for calendar manufacturers. It was during this period that he met and was befriended by William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody and began to sketch cowboys, Indians and horses.

In 1893 Schreyvogel made the first of several trips to the West at the invitation of Dr. Thomas McDonald, post surgeon at the Ute Indian Reservation in Colorado, where he spent five months sketching and collecting Native American and cavalry artifacts. He became an excellent rider and learned sign language. During the same trip, he visited Arizona where he continued his sketching.

Schreyvogel returned to his apartment at 1232 Garden Street in Hoboken in the fall of 1893 and began painting Western canvases. His work was briefly interrupted by the grief he experienced over the death of his mother, which occurred on November 23, 1893. Recovered, he continued work using his favorite model, Storie Schultze, and former cavalrymen from the New York area to pose for him on the roof of his apartment building.

The year 1893 was also when Schreyvogel met and fell in love with Louise Walther, daughter of Paul Jean Walther. They were married on August 24, 1894, without her father’s blessing, and moved to 1220 Park Avenue in Hoboken with a top floor studio apartment. Between 1894 and 1903 Charles and Louise traveled to the West several times, particularly to Montana and the Dakotas. After 1903, Louise remained behind when Charles went on his Western trips.

Between 1895 and 1900 the couple, along with brother Robert, lived in impoverished circumstances. It was at this time that John Linde, a member of the German Club, became Schreyvogel’s strongest patron. In the late 1890s Schreyvogel entered the non-Western landscape painting “Close of an Autumn Day” in the 60th Annual Exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. The painting did not sell. In 1897 he entered a Western painting, “Over a Dangerous Pass,” in the 72nd Annual Exhibition of the National Academy of Design show in New York. The painting did not sell, although it was featured in a Harper’s Weekly article about the show.

The year 1899 brought a change in Schreyvogel’s difficult financial circumstances. He reluctantly entered “My Bunkie” into the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design and on December 31st won the Thomas B. Clarke Award for the best American figure composition. Key figures in the Academy at that time were Frederick Dillman, president and Henry Watrous, secretary. Ironically, on the same day he won the award, one of his staunchest supporters, his brother Louis, died. “My Bunkie” went on to win medals at the Paris Exposition and the Pan-American Exposition.

In the winter of 1902, in his 1220 Park Avenue studio, Schreyvogel began painting the controversial “Custer’s Demand,” which was rooted in his fascination with Fort Abraham Lincoln, the origin of Custer’s fateful expedition against the Sioux. The painting was unveiled in April 1903 at the Knoedler Art Galleries in New York. Schreyvogel’s fellow Western artist, Frederic Remington, criticized it severely for its historical inaccuracies in the New York Herald newspaper. Initially, Schreyvogel made no public comment on the controversy. Prior to beginning the painting, Schreyvogel had written to Elizabeth B. Custer, the widow of General George A. Custer, to obtain military contacts at the War Department and general information about the frontier. He forwarded a letter from Mrs. Custer to the Herald vindicating both him and the painting. Meanwhile, Remington attempted to support his position by enlisting the support of Lt. Col. John Schuyler Crosby, former aide-de-camp to General Sheridan during the Indian campaigns. Ironically, Crosby supported Schreyvogel.

Much impressed with Schreyvogel’s work, having seen it at the Corcoran Gallery, President Theodore Roosevelt invited Schreyvogel to lunch at the White House in November 1903. While the lunch never happened, the beginning of a friendship did. Roosevelt gave Schreyvogel a permit to visit any Army post or Indian Reservation in pursuit of his research, whereupon he traveled to the Ute, Sioux and Crow Reservations, and was witness to a grand council of more than 10,000 Crow, Blackfeet, Sioux and Chippewa Indians held at the Standing Rock Reservation.

Also in 1903, daughter Ruth Elizabeth was born to the Schreyvogels, who was the namesake of Mrs. Custer. Later that year, Schreyvogel was made an associate of the National Academy of Design. In 1904 “Custer’s Demand” won the St. Louis World’s Fair Exposition Bronze Medal. In 1905 Schreyvogel moved his family to a 36-acre farm in West Kill, New York where Grant Bloodgood, a local handyman, became his model.

The years from 1905 to 1912 were perhaps the happiest, most prosperous and most productive years of Schreyvogel’s life. Moffat, Yard & Company issued sets of platinum prints of his works. In 1907 he was invited to join the German Club and its Samstag Abend Kegel Club. Later that year, Charles Kaegebehn, a Hoboken restaurateur, published a souvenir booklet of Schreyvogel’s works. In 1909 Frederic Remington tragically died of complications from an appendectomy at the age of 48. Upon Remington’s death, Schreyvogel was hailed by many as the premier painter of the American West. Charles M. Russell had not yet achieved national recognition.

In the fall of 1911 while dining, Schreyvogel complained that a sliver of chicken bone was lodged in his gum. The bone was removed, but his health slowly deteriorated until he died from blood poisoning on January 27, 1912. Schreyvogel’s wife Louise would eventually marry a Mr. Feldmann and die in 1954. Daughter Ruth married Archie Carothers in 1932.

Sources
Carothers, Archie D. “The Charles Schreyvogel Memorial Studio Collection,” Persimmon Hill, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Fall 1970), 14-25.
Horan, James D. The Life and Art of Charles Schreyvogel: Painter-Historian of the Indian-Fighting Army of the American West. New York: Crown Publishers Inc., 1969.