Oscar E. Berninghaus

• Name — Oscar E. Berninghaus • Born — 2 October 1874 • Birthplace — St. Louis, Missouri • Died — 27 April 1952 • Place of death — Taos, New Mexico • Known for — Painting • Movement — Taos Society of Artists

Berninghaus was born on October 2, 1874, in St. Louis, Missouri. His father ran a lithography business, which stimulated an interest in watercolor painting in Oscar. The young artist regularly sketched local scenes around St. Louis, including the St. Louis riverfront. He developed an interest in business and sold his works to tourists and newspapers. At sixteen, he had quit school and taken a job with Compton & Sons, a local lithography company, where he started as an errand boy, but soon learned the technical details of engraving, color separation and printmaking. In 1893, he left Compton & Sons and joined Woodward and Tiernan, one of the largest printing concerns in the world at the time. In search of something more than the practical experience he was receiving at the lithography companies, Berninghaus attended night classes at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts at Washington University in St. Louis and sketched and painted in his spare time.

By 1899, Berninghaus held his first one-man show, developed a reputation as an artist, and worked teaching illustration at the School of Fine Arts. He was offered a commission by the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad to produce promotional sketches of the Colorado and New Mexico landscapes and soon traveled West. After spending a day in Denver, he traveled south to Antonito, Colorado, on a standard gauge railroad before transition to a narrow gauge track for the remainder of his trip into New Mexico. All the while, Berninghaus sketched, and was eventually invited by the conductor to ride on the top of the train car. When he passed nearby Taos, New Mexico, he disembarked the train and travelled overland. During his 8-day stay, he met and befriended Bert Phillips, who had established himself as a painter in Taos the previous year. Although he soon returned to St. Louis, and was married to Emelia Miller in 1900, Berninghaus was captivated by the local Indian culture and the landscape and light of New Mexico. For the next few years, the painter lived in St. Louis during the winters, where he pursued his commercial illustration work, and returned to Taos in the summers to pursue his fine art painting. In 1903 Berninghaus had two designs selected for the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair medal competition. In 1905 Berninghaus and his wife, Emelia, had their second son, Julius Charles Berninghaus, who would go on to become a well known New Mexican landscape painter in his own right. By 1908 the painter had firmly established himself as one of St. Louis' foremost artists, having won a competition at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, become a member of the St. Louis Artists' Guild, the Society of Western Artists, and the Salmagundi Club, and held a one-man exhibition of fifty Western paintings at the Noonan-Kocian Gallery. In 1914, a year after his wife died of diabetes, the Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company release a promotional booklet titled Epoch Marking Events of American History that was composed of billboard illustrations that Berninghaus had previously completed for the company. The book included 10 paintings by the artist featuring historical events important to the American West, including Hernando de Soto's founding the Mississippi River, Jacques Marquette's descending the same river, Pierre Laclède's founding of St. Louis, a scene from the Lewis and Clark Expedition, John C. Frémont, a pioneer wagon train on the Salt Lake Trail, and a Union Pacific train. Berninghaus painted a number of paintings for the Busch family throughout his lifetime, many of which were donated to the St. Louis Art Museum.

Berninghaus was a member of the following arts organizations: • National Academy of Design, New York, NY, Associate, 1926 • Salmagundi Club, New York, NY • Society of Western Artists, Secretary 1911-1913 • Society of Ozark Painters, co-founder, 1914 • Taos Society of Artists, founding member, 1915-1927 • St. Louis Artists' Guild, board member • Two by Four Club, St. Louis, Missouri • Painters Group of the Middle West • Deuce Poker Club

Berninghaus's murals adorn the walls of: • Missouri State Capitol (Jefferson City, Missouri) • Gateway Arch National Park, St.Louis, Missouri • Fort Scott, Kansas post office, Border Gateways • Phoenix Federal Building and post office, Phoenix, AZ • Weatherford, Oklahoma Post Office • Illustration — Border Gateways, by Oscar E. Berninghaus (1937) depicting immigrants arriving in Kansas territory following the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Mural is located on the second floor of the Fort Scott, Kansas Federal Courthouse.

Today Berninghaus paintings can be found in the collections of: • Amon Carter Museum (Fort Worth, Texas) • Sid Richardson Museum (Fort Worth, Texas) • New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe, New Mexico) • St. Louis Art Museum • Colby College Museum of Art (Waterville, ME) • Gilcrease Museum (Tulsa, Oklahoma) • Stark Museum of Art (Orange, Texas) • Nelson-Atkins Museum; Wichita Art Museum • Blanton Museum of Art, Austin • Museum of Western Art, [Kerrville, Texas]

• Paintings • Making Camp (c. 1930) • Spring Plowing (1937) • Adobe House (1940) • The Forty-niners (before 1942) • The Rabbit Hunter (c. 1945) • Taos Indian Couple • Taos Indians on Mesa • Las Truchas Peaks, NM (c. 1949)