Charles Stanley Reinhart
Charles Stanley Reinhart
American, 1844 – 1896
One of Harper’ s greatest illustrators, Charles Stanley Reinhart was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1844. Following the start of the Civil War, Reinhart worked for several years in Virginia on the military railroad and thereafter at a steel factory in his hometown. By 1867, he had saved enough money to travel to Europe and pursue his dream of becoming an artist, despite his mother’ s disapproval. He studied first at the Académie Suisse in Paris and in 1868 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Professors Streyhüber and Otto. In 1870, Reinhart received the offer from Harper’ s. Under Charles Parsons, head of the art department, Reinhart worked with fellow Tile Club members Edwin Austin Abbey and Arthur Burdett Frost as well as with illustrators Robert Blum and Howard Pyle. During the 1880s, Reinhart spent several years in Paris, exhibiting at the Salons and the Paris Exposition of 1889. He also exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York, and in 1888, he received the Temple Gold Medal from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for his painting, Washed Ashore( 1887). At the end of Reinhart’ s life, the painter and author Arthur Hoeber wrote:“… to those who knew him well there remains the added satisfaction that the charm of his splendid personality will ever linger as a delightful, ineffaceable memory”( Hoeber, 203). Reinhart was an exceptional draftsman and storyteller, and he made a significant contribution to America’ s golden age of illustration.
William Sergeant Kendall( American, 1869 – 1938), Charles Stanley Reinhart, 1896, color halftone poster, 15 7 / 16 x 11 1/2 in., National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Leslie and Alice Schreyer, S / NPG. 84.435
REFERENCES:“ Charles S. Reinhart Dead.” The Milwaukee Sentinel, August 31,
1896, 1. Hoeber, Arthur.“ Charles Stanley Reinhart.” The Illustrated
American 21, no. 7( February 6, 1897): 202 – 203.
Montgomery, Walter, ed. American Art and American Art Collections: Essays on Artistic Subjects by the Best Art Writers, Fully Illustrated with Etchings, Photoetchings, Photogravures, Phototypes, and Engravings on Steel and Wood by the Most Celebrated Artists. Vol. II. Boston: E. W. Walker & Co., 1889.
“ Obituary Record: Charles Stanley Reinhart.” The New York Times, August 31, 1896, 5.
100 THE TILE CLUB: Camaraderie and American Plein-Air Painting