Oscar E. Berninghaus

Born in 1874 in St. Louis, "The Gateway to the West," Berninghaus would not have been a likely candidate for laureate of an important American art movement. At 16, he began working in a printing house in St. Louis, where he learned the technical skills required to make lithographs and engravings. At the same time he was working there, he was also attending night classes at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, trying to improve his own artistic skills to a level where he could produce rather than process the commercial work handled in the printing shop. The School of Fine Arts led to the more prestigious Washington University in St. Louis and, in 1899, Berninghaus received his first major commission, a series of pieces for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad's travel literature for New Mexico and Colorado. https://www.medicinemangallery.com/oscar-edmund-berninghaus-biography