2019 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 133228 / 328  •  View Catalog  •   • 

133
Carl Rungius (1869 – 1959)
High Country Moose
oil on canvas
25 × 30 inches
signed lower right

According to Rick Stewart, “Carl Rungius was the greatest wildlife painter of the western wilderness. There was no other artist who studied the animals and the landscape so closely, or who painted them with a greater degree of skill and understanding. His father and grandfather were amateur naturalists in their native Germany, and Rungius studied wildlife painting at the Berlin Academy. In 1894, he received an invitation from relatives to come to America for a moose-hunting expedition in Maine. He stayed afterwards, settling in New York, and developed a career for the next ten years as a wildlife illustrator for a variety of outdoor magazines. In 1895, he journeyed to the Rocky Mountains to a ranch at the foot of the Wind River chain in Wyoming. He hunted and sketched profusely for five months, traveling as far as Jackson Hole and the Yellowstone country. Returning to New York, he adorned his studio with his trophies and determined to stay in America. Rungius returned to Wyoming in successive years, and in 1904, accompanied a scientific expedition into Canada’s Yukon Territory where he studied high mountain sheep. Back in New York, he became a popular and well-respected artist, and regularly exhibited his work to high acclaim. ‘There is not likely to be another fellow who will have the opportunity to study big game as you are doing,’ Frederic Remington wrote him admiringly ‘and I think records of us fellows who are doing the ‘Old America’ which is so fast passing will have an audience in posterity.’”

PROVENANCE
The Estate of Hugh MacAulay, Cochrane, Alberta

133

Carl Rungius

1869 – 1959

High Country Moose
oil on canvas
25 × 30 inches
signed lower right
Sold at Auction: $89,250
Condition ReportSurface condition is excellent. No signs of restoration.

Important Notice: Statements of condition are provided as a service to potential bidders; such statements are educated opinions and should not be regarded as facts. The Coeur d’Alene Art Auction has no responsibility for any errors or omissions.