Albert Herman Schmidt, “Winter on the Rock River,” Oil on Canvas, c. Early 20th Century

Photograph of a painting.

The color palette for this painting is a gray-blue-green accented by dark-brown tree limbs and sticks. Three scrawny leafless trees, growing on the extreme edge of the riverbank, frame this composition that features the Rock River. Snow has accumulated in low spots, and in the crevices of tree branches. Patches of snow spot the hilly landscape as the grayish-blue river flows around the bend. Reflections of the trees along the riverbank sit directly below the trees and are suggestive of mid-day shadows. The nearly white sky and cool colors evoke a cold, damp day. This painting has been in the collection since the gallery officially opened. This is a view of the Rock River past the mouth of Mud Creek. It was painted after an early spring snow.

28 1/4 x 36″

(1883-1957)

Albert Herman Schmidt was born in Chicago. He studied painting at the Art Institute with Charles Francis Browne and J. H. Vanderpoel. Schmidt is believed to have first visited the Eagle’s Nest Art Colony as a student of Browne. Later he studied in Paris at the Julian Academy. He joined the Chicago Society of Artists and won several awards for pieces he exhibited in the Society of Western Artists. Locally, he was a friend of the Van Inwegin family whose home on the west side of the river adjoined Stronghold on the south. The family maintained a close relationship with the Eagle’s Nest Camp, visiting back and forth across the river by boat. By the 1920s, he was living in the southwest, where he was an early Santa Fe art colony member.

If you look around the gallery, you will see several Schmidt paintings. His work is also featured in the Albuquerque Museum, the Museum of New Mexico, the American Embassy at the Vatican, and at the Embassy in Prague.