The Painter of the Smokies

Rudolph Ingerle wasn’t the first artist to turn his brush on the endless mountain vistas of the Smokies, and he certainly wasn’t the last. But he may have been one of the most influential, as a contemporary of writer Horace Kephart and photographer George Masa who played a role in establishing Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Hailed during his lifetime (1879–1950) as the “Painter of the Smokies,” Ingerle encouraged the movement to protect for posterity over 500,000 acres of the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina.

From his childhood, Ingerle loved mountains. Born in Vienna, Austria, he frequently visited his paternal grandparents in Moravia, a mountainous region in the eastern part of the modern-day Czech Republic. As a young teenager, Ingerle immigrated with his family to the American Midwest, eventually settling in Chicago, where he studied art and became active in art circles. Based in the country’s flat heartland, Ingerle sought inspiration elsewhere for his paintings, first in Brown County, Indiana—an area in the south-central part of the state known for its picturesque rolling hills. He later moved on to the Ozarks, where he explored the unspoiled terrain along the Gasconade River. In the early 1920s, Ingerle looked south and east and discovered the Cumberland Mountains of western Virginia and eastern Kentucky and, in 1926, he first visited the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina.

Ingerle proclaimed it was “love at first sight.” Writing for the Palette and Chisel, a Chicago arts publication, he described his “fate,” as well as the extensive varieties of trees and plants, calling the mountains in May “a vast flower garden.” He mentioned “crystal clear streams tumbling, roaring along, plunging over waterfalls,” and concluded his article with the following declaration: “The Smokies have one quality that is unique—charm. The Smokies have enduring charm. Having seen them once they lure you back again and again. I love them, and they just keep a callin’ ‘come back,’ and it makes me mighty lonesome for them.”

The paintings that Ingerle produced as a result of his many forays in the Smokies reflect his passion for the area. An imposing, almost square canvas, “Oconolutfy” shows a full moon rising through the clouds as the sun sets on two intersecting mountain ranges. The area depicted is a river valley and derives its name from a Cherokee village known as Egwantuli—“by the river.” Explorer and naturalist John Bartram noted it in his journal for 1775. The waters of the Oconaluftee—the conventional spelling of the name—were sacred to the Cherokee. Heavy logging took place there until the mid-1930s, but stopped once the National Park Service took control. In 1940, the Civilian Conservation Corps built a stone and log ranger station, which served from 1947 until 2011 as a visitor center. 

Ingerle exhibited his paintings over 30 times at the Art Institute of Chicago, bringing visibility to conservation efforts. A critic for the Chicago Tribune substantiated his influence: “Rudolph F. Ingerle has won an enviable reputation as a landscape painter. In recent years he has done a great deal of painting in North Carolina. His superb mountain landscapes have captured the imagination and heart of an enormous public.” 

As his reputation grew, Ingerle believed that he played a modest role in the effort to set aside the Smokies as a national park, which was successfully finalized in 1934. His painting of a rustic cabin surrounded by an autumnal blaze of foliage, “Sunday Afternoon,” may be a tribute to his literary counterpart, Horace Kephart, whose volume Our Southern Highlanders documented his experiences living in the mountains of Western North Carolina. The tall central figure with a walking stick and high boots wears a broad-brimmed hat not unlike the one that the writer usually donned. Like Ingerle’s paintings, Kephart’s book is credited with inspiring the park’s founding. His reverential descriptions reveal his enthusiasm: “I loved of a morning to slip on my haversack, pick up my rifle, or maybe a mere staff, and stride forth alone over haphazard routes, to enjoy in my own untutored way the infinite variety of form and color and shade, of plant and tree and animal life, in that superb wilderness that towered there far above all homes of men.”

Though known primarily as a landscape painter, Ingerle also executed a number of       remarkable figure studies. His compelling “Salt of the Earth” is an expression of Depression-era regionalism akin to Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” Ingerle declared in his article: “The natives are the finest strain of Anglo-Saxon, hospitable, kind, living mostly in log cabins in the ‘holler,’ as they call the valley. The mountaineers are fine types and afford great opportunities for figure painting. Here, I believe, is one phase of American life and landscape that is still pure.” 

“Salt of the Earth” may have been one of Ingerle’s favorite paintings, as it remained with him until his death in 1950; it was acquired shortly afterward and given to the Rockford Art Museum by Mr. and Mrs. Leslie H. Geddes. According to the museum’s curator, Carrie Johnson, “It is a treasured piece in our collection.” No less an authority than Dr. William H. Gerdts, professor emeritus at The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York, agreed, writing to the museum in 1987: “He appears an interesting artist, and certainly your painting is a top quality one.” 

As the so-called painter of the Smokies, Ingerle deserves more recognition for his advocacy of a distinct American geography and culture. With an artist’s eye and sensibility, his evocative vistas and figures studies convey the essential allure of what has become the country’s most popular national park, and, as he said, the Smokies “lure you back again and again.”

This article is derived in part from material that appeared in Scenic Impressions: Southern Interpretations from The Johnson Collection, Spartanburg, SC, co-published with the University of South Carolina Press, 2015.