Empire Builders
Empire Builders
Oscar Edmund Berninghaus
American, 1874 - 1952
1930
Watercolor and Gouache
14 x 22 in. (35.6 x 55.9 cm)
Watercolor and gouache on paper, 1930. Unsigned.
A design for a Veiled Prophet parade float by Oscar E. Berninghaus. A Union Pacific locomotive, its tender lettered “U.P.,” sits on a track bed of boulders. Around it, a work crew levels the grade while buckskin-clad scouts stand guard with rifles. The float is titled Empire Builders across its base, and it celebrates the building of the transcontinental railroad, which the Union Pacific pushed west from Omaha to its meeting with the Central Pacific at Promontory Summit in 1869.
The Veiled Prophet parade, staged each autumn in St. Louis since 1878, set themes from history and legend on elaborate horse-drawn and later motorized floats. These were built for a single night and then dismantled, so designs like this are often the only record that survives. Berninghaus, born in St. Louis in 1874 and later a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists, brings his knowledge of the West to the commission. The careful rendering of the 4-4-0 engine, from its balloon stack to its brass bell, shows the precision of his early training as a commercial illustrator.
A design for a Veiled Prophet parade float by Oscar E. Berninghaus. A Union Pacific locomotive, its tender lettered “U.P.,” sits on a track bed of boulders. Around it, a work crew levels the grade while buckskin-clad scouts stand guard with rifles. The float is titled Empire Builders across its base, and it celebrates the building of the transcontinental railroad, which the Union Pacific pushed west from Omaha to its meeting with the Central Pacific at Promontory Summit in 1869.
The Veiled Prophet parade, staged each autumn in St. Louis since 1878, set themes from history and legend on elaborate horse-drawn and later motorized floats. These were built for a single night and then dismantled, so designs like this are often the only record that survives. Berninghaus, born in St. Louis in 1874 and later a founding member of the Taos Society of Artists, brings his knowledge of the West to the commission. The careful rendering of the 4-4-0 engine, from its balloon stack to its brass bell, shows the precision of his early training as a commercial illustrator.
Oscar Edmund Berninghaus
c. 1915
Oil on Canvas
Oscar Edmund Berninghaus
c. 1920
Oil on Artist's Board
