Last summer (2023), Kaci Schoenhard, East Dubuque, Illinois, visited the Garnavillo Museum with her grandmother, Jane Thein, Garnavillo. While there, she noticed an oil painting of an elk in the museum’s balcony. “My Grandma Joyce has a painting just like that in her house!”
Last fall, Kaci’s Grandma Joyce and her husband Terry Schoenhard of Scales Mound, Illinois, and Terry’s sister Jeanne DesRochers of Canada, decided to visit the Garnavillo Museum to compare their pair of elk paintings to the museum’s. Carol DeSotel, Garnavillo Historical Society vice president, was on hand to help. (The museum owns a pair of elk paintings too, but only has one on display. The other is in storage due to poor condition.) When comparing the paintings, it was apparent that they had been “copied” from the same originals. Both the elks and the background looked the same at first glance. Closer inspection revealed variations in the background and in the elks themselves as well as the canvas size.
The Schoenhard paintings were signed and dated on the back by their painter – Aruba “Ruby” (Berryman) Youle, 1908, (Terry and Jeanne’s grandmother). The Museum’s are not signed or dated, but donation records state they were painted by Helene (Luth) Laarveld. So how did there come to be two sets of paintings so similar but by different painters?
During the late 19th and early 20th century, painting and drawing were leisure activities that many women took up. Some took formal lessons while others pursued it personally. There were also traveling artists who painted on commission and may have served as teachers. (Many women of the Garnavillo and National area were taught by Althea Sherman of National.)
Further “digging” on the web revealed chromolithographs and oil paintings of the same elks, in pairs or singly, on sale across the U.S. and overseas. Some signed and dated, some not. Swiss artist, Emilie Vouga (1840-1909) was the original creator of the elks. Her work was appreciated for her realism and attention to detail especially in animals. Due to its popularity, her work was widely reproduced in the early 1900s, even commercially, making it quite easy for amateur artists to “copy” her work.
Amateur artists, Youle and Laarveld, shared many similarities besides the hobby of painting. Both were born and raised in the Midwest and the same age. Youle was born in 1882 in Scales Mound, Illinois while Laarveld was born in Chicago in 1883. Youle married in 1904 and lived near Shullsburg, Wisconsin (her painting is dated 1908). Laarveld married in 1907 and remained in the Chicago area until moving to Clayton, Iowa in the 1940s. (Her paintings were donated to the museum by a Clayton resident.)
During the last season of the PBS series “All Creatures Great and Small” one of the elk paintings was spotted on the wall going upstairs in Mr. Farnum’s house. So, keep your eyes open, one never knows where another “elk” may turn up.