Carl Rungius

Carl Rungius was a German-born American painter widely regarded as the preeminent big game and wildlife artist of North America in the early twentieth century. Born in Berlin and trained at the Berlin School of Art, he emigrated to the United States in 1894 and made extensive sketching expeditions throughout the American West and Canadian Rockies, producing monumental canvases of elk, moose, bighorn sheep, and grizzly bears in their natural habitats. His masterworks, held in collections such as the Gilcrease Museum and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, combine rigorous anatomical accuracy with a robust painterly technique influenced by both German academic tradition and American Impressionism.