William J. SCHALDACH
1869–1982, USA

Schaldach was born in Elkhart, IN, on 15 February 1896. He was strongly interested in angling and wingshooting, pursuing the former exclusively until he was allowed to own a gun in his late teens. The family had moved to Grand Rapids, MI, in 1908, and Schaldach found himself in country admirably suited for pursuing these interests. He began writing and drawing while in high school and attended the Grand Rapids School of Art. He first publishing an article with his own illustrations at the age of nineteen. After service in the Navy he studied at the Art Students League of New York in New York City with George Bridgman and John Sloan (qv) and with Harry Wickey, who first instructed him in the techniques of drypoint, etching, and aquatint; he made the first of his numerous prints in 1927. He produced several watercolors and prints of wildfowl, anglers with fly rods in rivers, streams, and lakes, and game fish in the water and rising to the fly. He worked Forest and Stream as a managing editor until the late 1930s, returning to the magazine (by then renamed Field and Stream) after the Second World War. In 1931 he produced his only work for the Derrydale Press (qv), entitled American Gamebirds: Woodcock, a limited edition, hand-colored aquatint which was signed in pencil by the artist. Three further aquatints were planned, Grouse, Snipe and Quail, but none were reproduced; although the painting for Grouse was completed, Snipe and Quail were never painted. He wrote and illustrated Fish by Schaldach; The Wind on Your Cheek; Path to Enchantment; Currents and Eddies, Coverts and Casts; Upland Gunning; Carl Rungius, Big Game Painter: Fifty Years with Brush and Rifle, published in 1945 and for which both he and Rungius (qv) contributed illustrations; and other books. He lived with his wife and sons in Connecticut and Vermont and wintered in Arizona until 1956, when he and his wife moved permanently to Tubac, AZ.

Schaldach was a member of the Salmagundi Club, the Society of American Etchers, and the Independent Society of Printmakers, all in New York City. He exhibited at the National Academy of Design, the Society of American Etchers, with Artists for Victory at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Watercolor Society, all in New York City; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia; the Chicago (IL) Society of Etchers; the New York World's Fair in Queens, NY, in 1939; and other places. The Smithsonian American Art Museum's Inventory of American Paintings lists his Trout Leaping. Other examples of his work include Desert Incident, a 1940 aquatint of a coyote carrying a jackrabbit, and Bogland Tapestry, Woodcock, a watercolor of a woodcock that Schaldach raised and released.

Schaldach died in Tubac, AZ, in 1982.

Source: http://www.redfoxfineart.com