Oscar Berninghaus  (1874-1952)

Berninghaus came to Taos in 1899 after a sightseeing trip through the Rockies.  He worked in St. Louis as a commercial lithographer.  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 Rio Grande Railroad to visit Taos.  He then began to spend summers there 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 Artist in 1915.  By the early 1920’s, he was well known in the East as a painter of Indians and the southwestern landscape, which remained his favorite subject for the next thirty years.  Berninghaus’s family stills lives in Taos.

Art in New Mexico, New Mexico, 1900-1945 path to Taos & Santa Fe By Eldradge, Schimmel, Truettner.