Charles Schreyvogel (1861-1912) was born in New York in 1861, the second son of Paul and Theresa Schreyvogel, two German immigrants whose families moved to the United States to escape revolutionary troubles in Europe. His interest in art became apparent as a young child. Although discouraged by his father, a shopkeeper, he pursued these interests by working as an apprentice to a die-sinker and then in a lithography shop.

The family moved to Hoboken, New Jersey when Charles was still young, and it was there, later in life, that he would produce his major works. In 1886, he traveled to Europe to study at the Munich Art Academy under Karl von Marr and Frank Kirchbach. Upon his return in 1890, he began to take great interest in subjects of the American Frontier. By 1893, he had saved enough money to make his first trip to the Ute Reservation in Colorado.

In his first foray into the American West, Schreyvogel became enamored with the Great Plains Indians and their confrontations with the U.S. military. He diligently recorded minute details from the stories of officers and cavalrymen, and he spent time sketching Indians and Calvary troopers. He dedicated similar attention to accurate depictions of horses, clothing and weaponry. He returned to Hoboken with the intent of becoming a painter-historian.

Schreyvogel’s method was unique. Through the winter and summer, he preferred to paint on his roof in order to catch a light that was most reminiscent of his experience in the West. When on the roof, either in Hoboken or at his farm, he relied upon his memory, as well as the sketches he made, along with artifacts he brought back and interviews he recorded while on his trips west. He often used locals for modeling, including a handyman named Grant Bloodgod, whom he believed resembled a Plains trooper. His likeness can be seen in many of Schreyvogel’s large canvases.

In the 1890s, Schreyvogel painted many Western American scenes but received little acclaim other than from private, local patrons. During these difficult times, Charles and his new wife, Louise, lived in dire poverty, but the artist refused to abandon his Western subject matter. Schreyvogel’s big break came when his painting, My Bunkie, won the Clark Award for best American figure composition in 1899. The painting appeared in several newspapers and magazines, including Harper’s Weekly. This success set the tone for his most productive years. From 1900 to his death in 1912, Schreyvogel achieved great renown as a painter of the American West and of frontier life. Schreyvogel also received attention through his public controversy with contemporary artist Frederic Remington. Remington widely criticized the historical accuracy of Schreyvogel’s paintings, and competition between the two caused a national stir. Schreyvogel, however, stayed out of the fray and continued to admire Remington’s work.

From 1905 to the end of his life, Schreyvogel lived and worked on a farm in upper New York State. He continued to paint in the same style, depicting dramatic scenes of Plains warfare and skirmishes between Army troopers and Indians. His realistic scenes had made him famous, and his works were in high demand for both exhibitions and publications.

Saving the Dispatch is a fine example of Schreyvogel’s depiction of warfare on the frontier between the Calvary and Plains Indians. This particular work was completed towards the end of Schreyvogel’s career after he had fully mastered his craft. His frenzied style of brushwork creates a sense of urgency and motion within his figures. The troopers are riding at full gallop away from a group of Indians in the background, each man turned in a different direction. This was Schreyvogel’s favorite subject matter, and is typical of his compositions—the subjects move side-to-side, or coming directly toward the viewer, always at close range.

In Saving the Dispatch, one can see the extraordinary level of detail with which Shreyvogel paints horses; he portrays them from several different angles and in motion. In the West, he wrote detailed descriptions and made numerous sketches of the various types of horses used by Indians, cowboys and troopers. He also modeled horses in clay and bronze so that he could paint them "from life" while working back in the East. Here, Schreyvogel depicts a buckskin-clad scout riding a horse at full gallop in the foreground, and all four hooves are in the air suggesting that he was aware of E.J. Muybridge’s pioneering study, entitled Animal Locomotion, in which he discovered that at full gallop, all four hooves of a horse were off the ground. It is a testament to Schreyvogel’s devotion to accuracy.

A gravure print of this work appears in Horan, The Life and Art of Charles Schreyvogel. There, the work is titled The Attacking Troopers.

Henry Farny (1847-1916) was born Francois Henri Farny in Ribeauville, France, but his time in his native country was short-lived. Due to political and religious oppression, the Farny family immigrated to the United States when Henry was just six years old. After living in rural Pennsylvania for five years, the Farny’s made a permanent move to Cincinnati. This would be his hometown for the remainder of his life.

In Cincinnati, Farny purportedly attended Woodward High School, but was forced to quit after the death of his father in 1863. After working various odd jobs to help support his family, his career as an artist began to blossom in 1865. That year his illustrations began to appear in Cincinnati newspapers and in Harper’s Weekly. His employment with the Harper brothers enabled him to move to New York about 1866, and it was from there that he embarked on a three-year trip to Europe to further his artistic education. While in Europe, Farny is known to have studied in Italy, Vienna, Germany, and France. He supported himself through odd jobs, commissions and even a small inheritance he received from a relative in Colmar. Farny must have received considerable training during his study abroad in Europe. He is known to have trained heavily in landscape and figural studies. He also experimented with several artistic media. Although it is uncertain who Farny’s strongest influences were, he certainly had ample time to visit museums and study the Old Masters. His interests were wide ranging, even including Oriental and Egyptian styles. Farny made later trips to Europe in 1873 and 1875, accompanying Frank Duveneck who also became a significant influence on the young artist. Farny’s excursions to Europe molded him into a sophisticated artist, and these experiences, along with his formal training, aided him greatly in his eventual transformation from a well-known illustrator into a highly regarded fine artist.

During the 1870s, however, Farny remained, primarily, an illustrator. He continued to submit to Harper’s Weekly, and he received ample patronage in Cincinnati. His surviving work includes illustrations for Proctor and Gamble, designs for circus companies, work for a local Cincinnati publishing company, and illustrations for McGuffey Readers.

Beginning in 1880, Farny began to take advantage of public interest in Indian subjects, and it was here that he was able to reap his largest commissions and achieve financial success. Like many of his contemporaries, Farny took several trips west to take photographs, gather material and make sketches for the paintings and illustrations that he would execute back in Cincinnati. He made his first trip in 1881 to Fort Yates on the Missouri River in the hopes of meeting Sitting Bull, who had been recently held there. Although he did not actually meet Sitting Bull until his second trip west, he was able to collect artifacts, sketches, and photographs of the Sioux Indians for his first endeavors in depicting realistic Indian subjects. Farny is known to have made three trips west and it is possible that he took more, although there is no documentation.

From 1890 onward, Farny devoted himself exclusively to painting. Indian subjects remained his favorite until his death in 1916. His works are known for their exactitude of historical detail and stark realism. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Farny usually refrained from painting scenes of action or violence that so appealed to the imagination of the American people. Instead, he often chose to portray Indians in their natural settings, unaffected by American influence and civilization. This stance may have been in defiance of the negative effects of settlers in the West who threatened Indians’ way of life. When Farny did depict white influences in his paintings, such as trains or telephone wires, they were usually set at odds with the simplicity and nobility of his Indians. Typically, his works are sympathetic, and his compositions hearken back to more peaceful times on the Western frontier.

Summoned by the War Chief was executed in 1900, probably in Farny’s studio in Cincinnati. The scene depicts an Indian outside of his tent, fully adorned with his spiked club, loop necklace, and shield. In the background is a large tipi with a woman, presumably his wife, emerging to say goodbye. Inside, his two children’s faces can be seen as they lay on a decorated rug. Two Indians on horseback pass by in the far background. One of Farny’s favorite mediums was gouache, and he often rendered his studies in this style and completed an oil painting afterwards. This is the case with Summoned by the War Chief, as a nearly identical oil painting, titled Indians (also completed in 1900), was in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth Texas until 1994, when it was deaccessioned. It sold at Christie’s, New York, November 20, 1994 (lot 42); it then sold at Sotheby’s, New York, on May 20, 1998 (lot 68). Indians is illustrated in Carter, Henry Farny, page 178. Summoned by the War Chief was included in an exhibition devoted to Farny in 1975 by the Indian Hill Historical Museum. Farny was known to have collected many artifacts during his travels west. These were used repetitively throughout his paintings in order to supplement his compositions and capture the accuracy of the period. Such is the case in Summoned by the War Chief; the shield that Farny depicts in War Chief is illustrated in Carter, page 22, and is currently in a private Cincinnati collection. The shield was probably one of many items that Farny brought back to Cincinnati to use in his studio. These objects helped to aid Farny in the painting, as he was prim arily working from sketches and memory.

Summoned by the War Chief is an example of Farny’s work at the period of his highest accomplishment. His acute sense of detail in objects shows his awareness of an era coming to an end, and his willingness to capture the Indian people devoid of outside influence. His peaceful construction of an Indian camp in War Chief attempts to give the viewer a sense of the period before the frontier was tamed and before Indians were subjected to forced assimilation and reservations.