Born near Berlin, Germany, Carl Clemens Moritz Rungius became one of America's most noted wildlife artists, usually working in plein-air or directly from nature. His grandfather was a taxidermist and animal hunter, which gave him early exposure to this subject matter. He was also a hunter of big game from childhood, and eventually his lifestyle merged with his art. He studied art the Berlin School of Art, the Academy of Fine Arts, and the School of Applied Arts. His career as a painter began in Berlin in 1889, and much of his early work was in the style of German romanticism and realism. To many Europeans of the late 19th century, America represented a land of plenty with boundless opportunities for hunting, an image fueled by popular Wild West novels and the writings of authors such as James Fenimore Cooper. In 1894 Rungius leapt at the chance to visit an uncle in the United States, and he immigrated there a year later. From his base in New York, he made frequent hunting and sketching trips to Maine and New Brunswick, and eventually extended his forays to the Rocky Mountain region. During this time he did illustrations for popular magazines but by 1904 was focused on fine art and by 1913, was elected an Associate Member of the National Academy of Design becoming a full member in 1920. Rungius was enamored with the striking colors, bold landscapes, and wild animals of the American West. He established a summer studio in Banff, Alberta, Canada in 1922, and also maintained a New York studio, where he spent his winters painting large-scale canvases based on his extensive summer fieldwork. In New York, Rungius was active in the city’s art circles, where he saw and absorbed new techniques and ideas such as the impressionists’ color theory. Active in the first half of the 20th century, Rungius is important today because he was an innovator - the first career wildlife artist in America. An avid sportsman, he spent time in the wilderness to enhance his knowledge of animals and environments. His gorgeous, impressionistic paintings combine both landscapes and wildlife, and represent an idyllic world where the human imprint on the landscape is invisible. Rungius places his mammals in loosely sketched settings of open vistas and bright skies that reflect his hunting and painting trips to Wyoming, Alaska, and the Canadian Rockies. At a time when wilderness was fast disappearing, Rungius presented an image of the Wild and the West that was timeless for the viewers and hunters dedicated to preserving it. Carl Rungius as an artist and a Sportsman, was friends with many of North America's most important early conservationists. His animal art appealed to the leaders among the naturalists, and he was the preferred artist for journals such as Forest and Stream and Outing. He was also admired by Theodore Roosevelt, who was a personal friend. Rungius' artistic goals - to create a unified whole, where the animal and its environment were equally important - echo the basic principles guiding wildlife conservation.