Lot 1190 | The Last Drop

SCHREYVOGEL, CHARLES
1861 New York - 1912 Hoboken


Title: The Last Drop.
Trapper with his horse.
Technique: Bronze.
Height: 30cm.
Notation: Inscribed on the plinth: Copyrighted 1903 by / Char. Schreyvogel.
Foundry Mark: On the plinth's edge Foundry mark: Roman Bronze works N.Y. As well as on the bottom numbered: No 15.


Literature:
Catalogue of the Collection of the Museum of Western Art, Denver 1983, p. 110, ill. 76 (illustrated is another casting from the series);
G.A. Reynolds: American Bronze Sculpture: 1850 to the Present, Newark 1984, p. 23.
S. Campbell: The American West - People, Places, and Ideas. New York 2001, ill. 62 (illustrated is another casting from the series);
L.D. Rosenfeld: A Century of American Sculpture - The Roman Bronze Works Foundry, New York 2002, p. 138.

A trapper with his horse, together they share the last remnants of the water supply. This archetypal version of the Lonesome Cowboy as a group of figures modelled and cast in bronze originally served the artist merely as a study model, after which he developed the painting of the same name, "The Last Drop", at the turn of the century, now in the Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, Washington).
Charles Schreyvogel, born and died in the United States, came to Munich between 1886 and 1890 to study under his countryman Carl Marr, who later on became director of the academy of arts. Back in Hoboken he travelled from 1893 several times to the western part of the states to the Indian reservations there. The motifs he found there became his life theme, for which he is still highly regarded and sought after today. He became the painter of the Indians and cowboys, who documented the life in the American Wild West. Many of his works are exhibited in the museums there today.
The bronze "The Last Drop", one of only very few three-dimensional pictorial works by the artist, went from being a mere study object to becoming famous in its own right. The numbered edition, produced in the New York foundry, can be found in numerous museums in the USA, including the Rockwell Museum of Western Art, Corning, New York and the Museum of Western Art, Denver, Colorado.