Born in New York City, Schreyvogel was a young art student
at the Newark, New Jersey, Art League when his large family,
in both the United States and Germany, provided funds so that
he could study at the Royal Academy of Munich. His academic
training was valuable, but by the time he returned to the United
States, the damp German climate had seriously damaged his health.
Moving to Hoboken, New Jersey, he struggled to make a living
painting portraits and scenes for calendars produced by commercial
lithographers.
After attending a performance of Buffalo Bill’s Wild
West show in New York City, Schreyvogel decided that it was
his artistic calling to paint the historic “Indian fighting
army.’ Still suffering ill health, he eagerly took his
doctor’s advice to travel to the West, a popular destination
for people suffering from lung ailments. Spending five months
with a friend who was post surgeon at the Ute Indian Reservation
in southwestern Colorado, Schreyvogel made several side trips
through the Southwest to collect all kinds of artifacts—from
guns and Indian clothing and weapons to military gear. He also
photographed and sketched avidly, especially during a stay at
an Arizona ranch where he studied cowboys at work. Off For
Town is based on his experiences that summer.
When he returned to Hoboken in the fall, Schreyvogel immediately
began painting western scenes. His favorite models were former
cavalrymen (or friends who resembled his idea of western types)
who posed for him on the roof of his apartment building with
the “rugged’ cliffs of the New Jersey Palisades
along the Hudson River as a backdrop.
During the 1890s, most of his western-themed paintings were
for calendars produced by commercial lithographers. When one
lithographer rejected his now-famous 1899 painting My Bunkie because
of its unusual proportions, Schreyvogel entered it in the annual
exhibition of the National Academy of Design. To his immense
surprise, the sensational, heroic image of a mounted soldier
rescuing a comrade who had fallen from his horse during a fierce
battle with Indians took top prize as the best figure composition
of 1900.
On tour following the exhibition, My Bunkie won prizes
in the United States and Europe and Schreyvogel catapulted from
obscurity to fame almost instantly, a fame he perpetuated by
printing large numbers of photographic and half-tone reproductions
of his paintings. It likely was the success of My Bunkie that
prompted Schreyvogel’s election, in 1901, to become an
associate member of the National Academy.
Schreyvogel’s art was nearly always charged with the
high energy and tension of My Bunkie. Even when depicting
a quiet moment, as in the sculpture The Last Drop,
the emotional tension created by the trooper’s selfless
act of giving his last precious drops of water to his mount
is palpable. In this and other military scenes, Schreyvogel
captured the “strikingly American characteristics’ of
bravery under fire and personal sacrifice like no other artist
had. One critic asserted that he had endeared himself to “the
old frontier army . . . by depicting scenes of frontier life
and depicting it right. . . . down to the smallest buckle or
button.’
Remington, then considered the preeminent illustrator of the
Wild West, especially the U.S. Cavalry, took venomous public
exception to Schreyvogel’s popular 1902 painting Custer’s
Demand, showing General Custer holding a parley with a
Kiowa chief. Attacking both Schreyvogel’s credentials
and the painting’s authenticity, Remington called it “half
baked stuff.’ The accusation must have stung Schreyvogel,
whose reputation for assiduous attention to authentic details
had never been challenged.
Several notables rushed to Schreyvogel’s defense, including
Custer’s widow, a retired army colonel who was depicted
in the scene, and President Theodore Roosevelt, who invited
Schreyvogel to lunch at the White House and gave him a permit
to visit any Army post or Indian Reservation he wished in order
to continue his research. Perhaps trying to downplay the controversy,
Schreyvogel said publicly only that he believed Remington to
be “the greatest of us all.’ An unrepentant Remington’s
last words on the subject were “I despise Schreyvogel.’
Undamaged by Remington’s accusations, the years that
followed were happy and prosperous ones for Schreyvogel. Following
Remington’s untimely death in 1909, the editor of Leslie’s
Weekly magazine declared him to be the greatest living “interpreter
of the Old West.’ Tragically, in 1912, Schreyvogel died
of blood poisoning. Because of his meticulous painting technique,
he left behind fewer than one hundred paintings and just a few
bronzes.
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