Online Artist Archive

Wimar, Carl
b. 1828; d. 1862
Discipline: Painting

A German, Carl Wimar was born near Bonn in 1828. He had come to St. Louis with his mother in 1843. He had studied painting, and he apprenticed to an ornamental artist. In 1852, Wimar returned to Germany, where he attended the Dusseldorf Academy and studied romantic realism.

In Germany, Wimar became known as the "Indian painter" because his canvases depicted Indians scenes from history and books of James Fenimore Cooper.

The artist returned to St. Louis in 1856. He traveled to the Upper Missouri country in 1858, sketching and taking photographs. Wimar sketched Forts Union and Clark at that time. He made a second trip upriver in 1859.

He died of tuberculosis in St. Louis in 1862.

- Ken Rogers

Originally published under the title "Stanley, Wimar, Hays and Sohon: They Also Came Up the Missouri" in Lewis and Clark: Art of the Upper Missouri. (Ken Rogers, Tim Fought, editors. Jim Bridges, publisher. Bismarck: The Bismarck Tribune, 2000.)