Bonhams 1793 : Carl Clemens Moritz Rungius (American, 1869-1959) Olympian Elk 30 x 46 1/4in

PROVENANCE:
with Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York
with Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico

German-born artist, Carl Rungius, came to the United Sates in 1894 after training as a Romantic painter in his native country. Shortly after he arrived, Rungius established a permanent residence in New York City and later a summer home in Alberta, Canada. Son of a taxidermist and avid hunter, wildlife painting came naturally to the young artist.

Only one year after his arrival in North America, Rungius made his first of many excursions to the American West and the greater Northwest. This trip of 1895 is considered pivotal to the artist's development both personally and professionally. For the rest of his life, Rungius would travel for weeks on end to destinations such as Wyoming, Yellowstone National Park, the Yukons, the Canadian Rockies, Arizona and Montana and create sketches from life and nature en plein air.

These sketches would assist the artist when he returned to his studio and produced finished, academic style canvases with rich, bold passages of color. Among his favorite and most prolific subjects were big game such as moose, grizzly bears, caribou and elks as well as smaller game such as mountain goats, antelope, sheep and deer.