August Petrtyl

Petrtyl was a member of the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts and shared a studio with fellow Chicago painters Carl R. Krafft and Rudolph F.

• Name — August Petrtyl • Born — 8 July 1867 • Birthplace — Bohemia, Austria-Hungary • Died — 8 November 1937 • Place of death — Chicago, Illinois, U.S. • Known for — Painting, illustration, mural painting, commercial art • Resting Place — Bohemian National Cemetery Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

Petrtyl was born on July 8, 1867, in Bohemia in Austria-Hungary, to Anton Petrtyl and Victoria Barta, both Bohemian natives. In July 1868, at approximately nine months of age, he and his family emigrated to the United States, departing from Bremen and arriving in New York City on July 31, 1868, aboard the ship Ariel. The family subsequently settled in Chicago, Illinois, where Petrtyl would spend the remainder of his life and career.

Petrtyl operated a commercial venture called the Publicity Art Shop in the Harvester Building at 606 S. Michigan Avenue in Chicago, sharing the studio space with fellow painters Carl R. Krafft and Rudolph F. Ingerle. A letter dated February 27, 1915, addressed to Frank Werner of the Chicago Commission for the Encouragement of Local Art, bears the signatures of all three artists, confirming their professional collaboration. All three were members of the Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts. Petrtyl joined several fellow Palette and Chisel Club members on painting excursions throughout the region, including a trip to Brown County, Indiana in the summer of 1910 with Victor Higgins, Otto Hake, and Rudolph F. Ingerle, and painting trips to the Ozark Mountains of Missouri with Krafft and Ingerle. Krafft and Ingerle went on to co-found the Society of Ozark Painters in 1914 alongside St. Louis-based artists Frank Nuderscher, Oscar E. Berninghaus, and Carl Gustave Waldeck. In December 1914, Petrtyl and Ingerle participated in a joint exhibition at their shared studio at 606 S. Michigan, coinciding with a concurrent exhibition of Krafft's Ozark Mountain scenes.

Petrtyl also worked extensively in commercial design. He created cover art for major trade publications, including the October 1924 issue of The Inland Printer, a leading journal of the American printing industry. He also designed the Green Spade Tarok deck, an intricate set of Czech-style tarot playing cards documented in period sources and available through auction and collectibles markets. In 1922, Petrtyl designed a variant of the Central European card game Königrufen with American-themed cards, replacing traditional figures with American characters: Uncle Sam as the Sküs, Papoose as the Pagat, and Chiefs as the Kings. There is no evidence the variant was adopted for play.

Petrtyl painted six large murals for the Lawndale National Bank in Chicago. In 1902, he drafted the landscape expansion designs for the Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago, contributing graceful curving sections to the cemetery's eastward and southward expansion.

Petrtyl died on November 8, 1937 at the age of 70 in Chicago. He was survived by his wife, Barbara, and was buried on November 11, 1937, at the Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago — the same institution whose landscape expansion he had helped design 35 years earlier.