203 Charles Schreyvogel 1861-1912 The Last Drop Cast No 127 Bronze, Signed Chas. Schreyvogel, with Copyright and dated 1903 and inscribed RBW beneath base Cast by Roman Bronze Works, NY. Height: 12 inches Estimate: $40,000 - 60,000 Literature: Patricia Janis Broder. Bronzes of the American West. New York: Harry N. Abrams. 1975, pp. 202-206, illustrated p. 203 (another example). Charles Schreyvogel was never a prolific illustrator, so the national acclaim accorded his contemporaries, Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell came late to him and was short-lived due to his early demise at the age of 51. He did, however, travel widely in the West from his home in Hoboken, sketching and documenting life on U.S. Army posts and Native American reservations. Unlike Remington and Russell, the cowboy was not a typical subject for Schreyvogel. Most of the fewer than 100 major works he had painted when he died were scenes of intense conflict between soldiers and Indians. In 1901, his powerful action scene, My Bunkie, in which a cavalryman rescues a friend who has lost his horse during a scuffle, won top honors at the National Academy of Design. Demand for his work rose. Schreyvogel only did two subjects in bronze, a bust of White Eagle, and this one, The Last Drop, which began its life as a clay model the artist created as a model for a painting. One of the most poignant of all Western scenes, The Last Drop has enjoyed a long life, appearing as a tableau in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, in countless reproductions and imitations, and on film and television.
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