San Bernardino’s Carl Schmidt was one of the most prolific and influential artists in the area, promoting the inland region with extraordinary paintings, sketches, and colorful illustrations from 1924, until his death in 1969.
Schmidt worked tirelessly to create and sell his art that focused on western landscapes, but his favorite subjects were desert scenes, and Native Americans. He was often in his studio, but whenever he could, he’d pack up his paintbox and travel to remote locations to capture his favorite scenes.
Carl Rubin Schmidt was born on March 14, 1885, to Frederick and Ellen Schmidt in Elizabeth, Minnesota.
Frederick Carl Schmidt was a renowned Civil War veteran, who at age 5, came to the United States in 1848 from Germany. When Frederick returned from the war, he took up farming in St. Charles, Minnesota. He had five children with his first wife Augusta, and five more, including Carl, with his second wife, Ellen.
Frederick Carl Schmidt became a minister in 1876, and he preached in Southern Minnesota until his death in 1906 at age 62.
Carl Schmidt began drawing at an early age, and his sketches of farm animals and local scenery were often praised. This prompted him to attend the Art Institute of Chicago around 1910. After graduating, he worked as a men’s fashion illustrator for the Street Railway Advertising Company of Chicago. He was later hired by the John Deere Company to do commercial artwork.
On his 1918 WWI draft card, Carl Schmidt listed his occupation as “artist,” and the experience as a commercial artist helped him throughout his career.
In 1924, Carl Schmidt moved to San Bernardino where his mother Ellen, sister Rhoda, and two aunts were already living. From this point , Carl worked for himself, operating from a small studio in the Harris Building in San Bernardino, and later from a studio in his home.
With oil on canvas or watercolor, Carl Schmidt was an impressionist, but his commercial sketches portrayed an attractive combination of lightheartedness and realism.
His commercial art advertisements carried a list of available options, including “an artistic letterhead, a signature cut, trademark design, a picture of your building, a real poster, cartoon, booklet, illustration, a sketch for your billboard, a scenic background, an oil painting, in fact anything in pictures or design.” Another advertisement said, “Have me tell your story in picture.”
In 1925, The San Bernardino Daily Sun hired Carl Schmidt to create a full-page perspective map and landscape sketch for the paper’s 30th anniversary. The map showed Southern California, stretching from Long Beach to the local mountains, deserts, and beyond.
Schmidt’s persistent self-promotion paid off in 1927, when he was chosen to create the art for the cover of the 1927 National Orange Show program — the first of several. The cover featured an elaborately costumed, dancing woman, with the Orange Show exhibit building in the background.
In 1940, Desert Magazine did a biography on Carl Schmidt.
Writer John W. Hilton described Carl Schmidt: “In the winter Carl usually can be found at his studio in San Bernardino, California, or out sketching somewhere on the Mojave or Colorado deserts. … In the field he lives in his car, cooks over a campfire, paints almost every day and minds his own business so strictly that many get the impression he is unsociable.
“Actually he is a fine companion on a camping trip, as I can personally testify. Carl is interested in his work above everything else in the world, and this seriousness has given him a shy reserve that shallow people seldom take the trouble to penetrate. Which is probably just as well.”
Shortly after Schmidt’s arrival in San Bernardino, he became active in several art associations and his work was often featured in galleries and private shows around Southern California. He became a prominent member of the San Bernardino Art Association, the Laguna Art Guild, and the Traditional Artists Association.
From Riverside to Los Angeles, Schmidt’s paintings garnered praise and awards, but he still had to be his own best salesman. His paintings ranged in size, from a small 8×10 to full wall murals.
In 1940, Schmidt built a home on 17th Street in San Bernardino, and he designed the second floor to be a permanent, spacious studio that was open to the public.
Schmidt was dedicated to his work and he remained a bachelor until 1949. At age 64, Carl married 51-year-old Lucile Sahr O’Hara (1898-1999), also a native of Minnesota.
In Schmidt’s last years, he suffered from a debilitating illness, but he kept painting from his bed using a specially constructed easel.
On Feb. 1, 1968, Congressman Jerry L. Pettis, R-Loma Linda, read a tribute to Carl Schmidt and his work, on the floor of the House of Representatives, which read in part:
“This artist is too gifted and sincere, too much a man of vision and artistic discipline to permit illness and being bedridden for years to stop his splendid work. He continues — bigger than illness — to paint, and his work continues to inspire a new appreciation for the subjects he loves.”
Carl Schmidt died at his home on Feb. 14, 1969, at age 83. Lucile Schmidt died in 1999 in Minnesota at age 101.
Several of Carl Schmidt’s paintings have been preserved at the San Bernardino Historical Society, 796 N. D St. Some of the paintings were donated by Lucile Schmidt.
The society’s collection includes oil paintings of Native Americans, paintings of pioneers arriving in San Bernardino in covered wagons, watercolors, and the original cover art for a brochure.
Information: sbhistoricalsociety.com
Mark Landis is a freelance writer. He can be reached at Historyinca@yahoo.com
