Rudolf Cronau (1855-1939) 
Ogalalla Dakota Indian, 1881 
c. 1881 Pencil on paper 
Signed lower left: R Cronau & inscribed LL,Standing Rock & dated 1881 
Inscribed on verso 11 7/8 x 9 1/4 inches (paper) 8 ¾ x 7 5/8 (image), 20 ¾ x 19 3/4" (framed)
Provenance: Margaret Cronau Wunderlich (daughter of artist) 

Illustrated: Rudolf Cronau (1855-1939 in “Wilden Westen”: Views of the American West

Illustrated page 7 (full page)

Rudolf Daniel Ludwig Cronau was born in Solingen, Prussia (Germany) in 1855. He was a Düsseldorf-schooled artist who made several trips to America as a newspaper correspondent. Additionally, he was a prolific writer of magazine articles and books relating to his western travels, American history, and German contributions to America. Initially, Rudolf Cronau was sent to America in 1881 by the German newspaper Die Gartenlaube to write a series of articles and create drawings of American life from the East coast to the West coast. After working on the East coast, he traveled down the Mississippi River, up the Missouri River through Kansas and Nebraska, to Wyoming and other western states, and then Louisiana and Florida. 

The next year, in 1882, Cronau made the trip to the West Coast by Union Pacific Railroad. During his travel on the Missouri River, Cronau stayed for six months in 1881 at Fort Randall and on the Standing Rock Reservation among the Sioux Indians. This visit created a long standing friendship between Sitting Bull and Cronau, and the artist painted the first life portrait of Sitting Bull. Fort Randall (1856-1892) was located south of the Missouri River below the present Fort Randall Dam in South Dakota near the Nebraska border. The Fort was built to protect settlers and explorers along the Missouri River in southern South Dakota and northern Nebraska as they traveled across the plains from the upper Missouri River and the Platte River to the south. The post also protected the Teton Sioux and Ponca reservations from illegal settlement by miners and homesteaders. 

Most of Rudolf Cronau’s work is in pencil, some in pen, and there are a few watercolors. 

Works by Cronau are in the permanent collections of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art (Fort Worth, Texas), Thomas Gilcrease Museum (Tulsa, Oklahoma), Brooklyn Museum (New York), and Tucson Museum of Art (Arizona.) The Oglala are one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people who, along with the Dakota, make up the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ. 

A majority of the Oglala live on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.The reservation is the eighth-largest reservation in the country, covering 11,000 square miles (approximately 2.2 million acres) in southwestern South Dakota. The reservation borders the Nebraska state line to the south, Rosebud Indian Reservation to the east and Badlands National Park to the north.