Native Son Harold von Schmidt

Harold von Schmidt was an American painter and illustrator who created western scenes so full of life that one believes he personally witnessed covered wagon trains trundling across the prairies, thrilling buffalo hunts, diligent miners panning for gold, 19th century California saloons, and the camps and battle scenes of the Civil War.

However, von Schmidt, who was orphaned at age five, was born too late to have experienced the old West himself. He was born May 19, 1893, in Alameda, a city formally organized only nine years earlier, although it had been founded in 1853 as a large peach orchard on acreage that had been part of one of California’s most valuable Mexican land grants: the Peralta family’s 35-square-mile Rancho San Antonio. Instead of first-hand experiences, the boy, who went to live in San Francisco with his grandfather, absorbed the romance of the period from the vivid tales his grandfather told him—a man who certainly had lots of fascinating stories to tell.

Harold’s grandfather was Alexis (Alexey) von Schmidt, a civil engineer who came to California in a wagon train in 1849, the year gold hysteria drew tens of thousands of individuals from the United Stares and abroad into the territory. Six years after that, Colonel von Schmidt headed the first survey party over lands that eventually became part of Yosemite National Park; and in 1872 was granted the contract to officially survey the California-Nevada-Arizona borders. At some point, young Harold returned to Alameda to live with his aunt Lily von Schmidt and her second husband, Major Charles Lee Tilden—like his grandfather, a “forty-niner”—who doubtless regaled the youngster with his own memories. Both aunt and uncle encouraged his interest in art.

While still in high school, Harold began art studies at the California School of Arts and Crafts. At twenty-two he married Edna Close, on November 24, 1915, in Alameda. Two years later, his painting titled “Spanish Doubloons” appeared as the frontispiece of the prestigious Sunset magazine’s November issue. In 1919 von Schmidt was among a group of talented, up-and-coming San Francisco artists who contributed poster art to a Red Cross fundraiser; and again in 1920, he was one of several noted local artists who contributed their work to an auction, held in the St. Francis Hotel, to fund a memorial library for the famous author Jack London.

In 1924 von Schmidt entered the Grand Central School of Art in New York City, taking up residence in New Rochelle, a well-known artists colony which was home to many of the top commercial illustrators of the day, such as Norman Rockwell, Tom Lovell and N.C. Wyeth. His marriage had produced a daughter but perhaps had already ended, because in 1927, Harold and Edna both remarried. He moved to Westport, Connecticut with his second wife, the former Forrest Gilmore.

An illustrator who worked in oil, von Schmidt created art for the Saturday Evening Post, Collier’s Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Liberty, and Sunset, plus a series of historical paintings for the John Hancock Insurance Company. He spent two years preparing 60 illustrations for a deluxe edition of author Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop.

Over the years he produced hundreds of memorable works. Doubtless the one most affordable to acquire by the general public was the Pony Express commemorative, 4-cent postage stamp he designed, first placed on sale July 19, 1960. The stamp, measuring .84 by 1.44 inches arranged horizontally, depicted a lone, mounted Express rider racing headlong towards his destination. Printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, issuance was set in sheets of 50, with an initial order placed of 120 million.

Harold von Schmidt died June 3, 1982, in his Connecticut home. His son, Eric, was quoted as saying that one of his father’s western scenes had brought $50,000 just two week prior, and another had sold for $40,000 the previous fall. Aside from their artistic worth, the von Schmidt paintings were already rare, in part because—after they were reproduced in magazines—the artist himself routinely destroyed those he didn’t regard as his best work. A cofounder of the Famous Artists School, he had served as president of the Society of Illustrators, and as a life trustee of the Artists Guild of New York.  

Twelve of von Schmidt’s original paintings depicting the westward immigration and the Gold Rush hang in the Governor’s Office at the State Capitol in Sacramento, five of his Civil War paintings are in the permanent collections at West Point; and today his artistic renderings continue to sell in the thousands of dollars.