# Carl Rungius artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/carl-rungius/
Profile generated: 2026-05-08T10:53:17.336Z
Quality: high confidence, strong sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1869-08-18
- Death date: 1959-10-21
- Nationality: German, American
- Movements: Wildlife art, Sporting art
- Common media: Oil painting

## About Carl Rungius

Carl Clemens Moritz Rungius (1869–1959) was a German-born American painter recognized as the foremost big-game artist in North America and one of the first to build a career around wildlife painting. Born in Rixdorf, Germany (now part of Berlin), he studied at the Berlin Art Academy from 1888 to 1890 before immigrating to the United States. Rungius spent much of his working life in the western United States and Canada, painting elk, moose, bears, mountain sheep, and other large mammals in their natural habitats. He was known for combining close anatomical study with atmospheric landscape composition, often working from direct field observation. Active mainly in the first half of the twentieth century and based in New York City, Rungius is considered a foundational figure in North American wildlife and sporting art. His legacy bridges scientific illustration and fine-art painting, and his works are held in museum and private collections focused on American art and natural history.

## Common works and media

Rungius is best known for oil-on-canvas paintings of North American big-game mammals—elk, moose, mountain goats, bighorn sheep, bears, and caribou—set in Rocky Mountain and Canadian wilderness landscapes. His output ranges from large finished studio canvases intended for exhibition to smaller plein-air field sketches and oil studies. Print reproductions after his paintings were also produced and appear at auction. The market is dominated by two-dimensional works in oil; sculpture and works on paper are less common.

## Market and appraisal context

Rungius's works appear regularly at auction, with over five hundred recorded lots. Paintings are most often offered in American painting, sporting art, and Western art sales. Oil canvases of big-game subjects—particularly elk, moose, and mountain sheep in landscape settings—tend to dominate results. Value is influenced by the size of the work, whether it is a finished studio painting or a smaller field study, condition, provenance history, and the strength of the composition. Signed works with documented provenance through sporting-art collectors, natural-history museums, or conservation organizations tend to carry the strongest auction records. Editioned prints after his paintings also circulate and should be evaluated separately from original works.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine artist identity research with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. For Carl Rungius, identity data is sourced from the Library of Congress, Getty ULAN, VIAF, RKD, and Wikidata authority files.

## Sources

- Library of Congress: https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n85825890
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500008981
- VIAF (OCLC): https://viaf.org/viaf/30418759/
- RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History): https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/68893
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5040738
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Rungius