The grandson of an avid hunter and taxidermist, Carl Rungius grew up near Berlin, Germany.  He attended the Berlin Art School, the Academy of Fine Arts, and the School of Applied Arts before immigrating to America in 1894 at the age of twenty five.  As an art student, he made detailed studies of the musculature of animals, which informed his later paintings of big game.  Rungius was a sharp observer and keen hunter with a deep reverence for nature.

After a ten year career as a magazine illustrator, during which Rungius travelled out west multiple times, he turned to easel painting full time.  His favorite wilderness destinations included Wyoming, the Yukon, and the Canadian Rockies.  In 1922, he and his wife Louise constructed a summer home and studio in Banff, Alberta, named “The Paintbox.”  From this location the artist enjoyed easy access to majestic landscapes and the animals that inhabited them.

The Boy Scouts of America honored Rungius for his dedication to nature and he was an elected member of the National Academy of Design.   Additionally, he held membership in the New York Zoological Club, the Salmagundi Club, the National Arts Club, the Trail Riders of the Canadian Rockies, and the Boone and Crockett Club, a big game conservation organization founded by Theodore Roosevelt.  Over the course of his career, the artist’s attitude toward the big game he painted changed with the spread of the conservation movement.  Rungius no longer portrayed the animals as unsuspecting prey, but instead as natural and comfortable in their element.

Rungius counted Theodore Roosevelt as a prime patron, and today the entire contents of the artist’s studio as well as many of his works can be found in the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, in addition to the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.