PBA Galleries

Pencil on thick paper. 31.5x42 cm. (12‚x16½"), affixed to map using old identification stickers and two partial labels of the Chicago, Kansas and Nebraska Railway.

Captivating and intriguing depiction of a herd of horses on the range in the 1880's, signed Albert G. Hugo, 1888, in lower left. Albert Gustave Hugo, born in Helmstedt, Germany in 1842, emigrated to the United States in 1867, settling in Wyanet, Illinois, where he married the French-born Katherine Engel in 1871. Albert Hugo moved to Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas in 1886, taking a position with the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad as a clerk, a position he held for the next 25 years. He was evidently enthralled by the prairie, and captured it in this skilfull if slightly primitive drawing. The two labels of the Chicago, Kansas and Nebraska Railway used in the matting are telling, since that railroad went into foreclosure in 1889, before being taken over in 1891 by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad.