Rudolph Ingerle Art Wrap

Rudolph Ingerle (1879-1950)

The Passing Show, 1925, Oil on Canvas

McClung Museum of Natural History & Culture

Born in Vienna, Austria, Rudolph Ingerle and his family immigrated to the United States when he was youngster. The family first settled on a farm in Wisconsin before relocating to Chicago around 1891. Rudolph first studied music, later switching to art at the Schmidt Art Academy and later studying at the Art Institute of Chicago. During the early 1900s, Ingerle joined Indiana artist T.C. Steele and others to form the Indiana School of Painting and also co-founded the Society of Ozark Painters.

The Appalachian Exposition of 1911, one of the largest exhibitions of art in the South, held at Chilhowee Park, featured Ingerle’s artwork for the first time in Knoxville. He made a memorable trip to the Great Smoky Mountains around 1920, spending subsequent summers painting there, and became known as “The Painter of the Smokies.” He witnessed firsthand the extensive logging of the virgin forests and became an advocate for their protection through the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park during the early 1930s.

Describing the natural beauty of the Smokies, Ingerle remarked, “Nearly always there hovers over these mountains a tenuous mist, a dreamy blue haze, like that of Indian summer that covers all, and is beyond mystery, enchantment.”

This painting is on view at the Knoxville Museum of Art in the ongoing exhibition, Higher Ground: A Century of the Visual Arts in East Tennessee.

Visit KHP’s Downtown Art Wraps page.

This art wrap is sponsored by RiverHill Gateway Neighborhood and a grant from the Tennessee Arts Commission.