Rufus Zogbaum

Biography from the Archives of askART

A well-known painter and illustrator of battle scenes of Army and Navy life, Rufus Zogbaum created depictions of military exercises that were widely published in magazines in the late 19th Century. His Civil War mural, the First Minnesota Regiment at the Battle of Gettysburg," was created for the state capitol building in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was the leading artist/ correspondent of the Spanish American War.

His reputation for depicting skirmishing cowboys preceded that of Frederic Remington and Charles Russell, and he is credited with "setting the pattern for those who would follow" (Robert Taft).

Zogbaum was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and as a young man, studied at the Art Students League in New York from 1878 to 1879, and in 1880 at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and in Paris at the Academie Julian with Leon Bonnat.

In 1884, he traveled to Montana to gather data for paintings of military life on the frontier, and in this capacity. He also worked as a correspondent for "Harper's Weekly" while traveling the Oklahoma Indian territory.