O.E. Berninghaus. Untitled. [American Indians on horseback with desert sage and low hills in background.]

Item — item: 4

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

From the Collection:

This collection consists of 38 works of art, along with one text document related to the artwork.

Beard donated sixteen oil paintings. Texas artists Ulrich W. Fisher, Joseph Lane, Gerald Harvey Jones (G. Harvey), Renne Hughes, and Porfirio Salinas are represented in the collection, as well as paintings by Earl G. Hammock (Arizona), Robert Wesley Amick (Connecticut/Colorado), Oscar Edmund Berninghas (New Mexico/Missouri/Kansas), Ross Stefan (Arizona), Harry Worthman (New York), Leonard Howard Reedy (Illinois), Mike Carroll (unknown), and William Herbert Dunton (Main/New Mexico). Many of the paintings are Texas landscapes and scenes related to the old West.

Beard also selected twenty engravings produced by Star Engraving Company of Houston, Texas. Nine of these engravings were created by artist Bernhardt Wall.

Dates

early 20th century

Creator

From the Collection: Beard, Roy J. (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Researchers are encouraged to use digital surrogates. In-person research with original artwork(s) must be approved/scheduled by the University Archivist.

Biographical / Historical

OSCAR EDMUND BERNINGHAS (1874-1952, NEW MEXICO, MISSOURI, KANSAS)

A few months of night classes at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, his only formal training, led Berninghaus to a successful career as a painter and illustrator.

While touring the Southwest in 1899, he was persuaded by a brakeman on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad to visit Taos. He stayed only a week on his first trip but returned from his native St. Louis each summer until 1925, when he settled in Taos permanently, drawn by the diverse population and scenic landscape.

Berninghaus was one of six founders of the Taos Society of Artists in 1915. By the early 190s, he was well known in the East as a painter of Indians and the southwestern landscape, which remained his favorite subjects for the next thirty years.

Source: "Oscar Edmund Berninghaus," Smithsonian American Art Museum, https://americanart.si.edu/artist/oscar-edmund-berninghaus-377 (accessed June 20, 2022).

For more information about Berninghaus, see the Taos Society of Artists page at the Taos Art Museum.