Henry Ernest Schnakenberg, “Indians Trading with the Half Moon”, 1941, One of Four Fresco Murals, Post Office Fort Lee, NewJersey

Born at New Brighton, Staten Island, New York in September of 1892, Henry Ernest Schnakenberg was an American realist painter and etcher known primarily for his renderings of New York’s Central Park and other cityscapes. He began his art studies with evening classes at the Arts Student League in 1913. Schnakenberg’s experience of attending the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art at the city’s 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, known now as the Armory Show, solidified his desire to be an artist. After that exposure, he began full-time classes at the League, that continued as three years of study under painter and printmaker Kenneth Hayes Miller.

After exhibiting two works at the Society of Independent Artists, Schnakenberg enlisted in the Army Medical Corps in 1917 at America’s entry into World War I. Discharged in 1919, he quickly returned to art, exhibiting alongside Joseph Stella at the Whitney Studio Club. Beginning in 1923, Schnakenberg taught for two years at the Art Students League and, later, became the League’s president in 1932. In addition to his teaching, he wrote essays and reviews throughout his career for art magazines.

Henry Schnakenberg regularly exhibited his work at the Society of Independent Artists as well as museum invitationals, including those at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He participated in the Carnegie International from 1920 to 1949 and exhibited alongside his mentor Kenneth Miller at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Beginning in 1932, Schnakenberg was represented by New York’s C.W. Kraushaar Galleries.  

After completing mural commissions from the Treasury Department’s section of Fine Arts for post offices in Amsterdam, New York and Fort Lee, New Jersey, Schnakenberg relocated to Newtown, Connecticut. He would travel from there to paint the summer landscapes of Vermont and New England farmlands. A member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, Henry Ernest Schnakenberg died at the age of seventy-eight in October of 1970 at Newtown. His body in interred at the Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp, New York.  

Bottom Insert Image: Henry Ernest Schnakenberg, “Air Plants, Puerto Rico”, 1927, Oil on Canvas, 77.2 x 92.1 cm, Whitney Museum of American Art, new York