Richard Philip Grossenheider (American, 1911 - 1975)
Two Squirrels
Watercolor on paper
Signed lower right
Paper size: 11 1/4 x 14 1/4 in
Frame size: 20 x 23 1/4 in

Richard Grossenheider, is best known for his illustrations for William Henry Burt’s Field Guide to Mammals, as revised edition of which was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1964 as A Field Guide to North American Mammals  in the Peterson Field Guide Series.

A great love of nature was the impetus for Richard Grossenheider’s entre to bird painting.  He began painting birds and animals when he was assistant curator of birds at the St. Louis Zoo from 1930-1937.  He studied at the University of Michigan and then entered the Army where he served with the Army Signal Corps in the South Pacific.  His adult years were spent in the Midwest where he studied wildlife which he painted with a lively sensibility. Grossenheider had a notable interest in wild canids -- and it was through his magnificent wolves at his private sanctuary, Botany Hill, that the present Wolf Sanctuary came into being.  The film Wolves and Wolfmen documented the artist and his wolves in St. Louis.

Grossenheider’s work was featured in an exhibit at the National Audubon Society in New York held in 1946, and later exhibited Chicago, Brisbane, Australia and Minneapolis.