When Edmund Schildknecht was one, his family moved from Chicago to Milwaukee where his father was chief engineer for the bottling machines of the Schilitz Brewery for over 50 years. He began painting at age four when Aunt Ella Schildknecht, an art teacher, gave him a box of paints. She encouraged him and so did a grandfather (Karl S. Schildknecht) and the boy’s namesake Uncle Edmund who also painted.1 After attending the Wisconsin School of Art (WSA) in Milwaukee from 1917 to 1920, he spent the next year at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts receiving academic training in art.2

It was most likely that Schildknecht encountered renowned landscape painter George Oberteuffer at the Pennsylvania Academy, as Oberteuffer had returned from about sixteen years in France in 1920 to take a position there.3 In 1923-24 Schildknecht went to Paris with George Oberteuffer and his wife Henriette Amiard and lived with them in Meudon, a Paris suburb, and later on the fifth floor of the Hotel de Seine. In a 1980 interview, the elderly artist recalled the positively profound impact of the Impressionist sections of the museums during the Paris stay, causing his palette of colors to shift from darker colors to brighter ones.4 During this period he also studied briefly at the Academie Julian and the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere.5

Starting in 1924, Schildknecht embarked on a 32-year career teaching fine arts at the Arsenal Technical Schools in Indianapolis. During his time in Indianapolis, the artist had works in numerous American exhibitions and he served as a judge for numerous juried exhibitions.

In 1927, the artist visited his brother-in-law in Milwaukee, and asked to visit the neighboring countryside in order to seek subjects for his painting, and ended up renting a room in Cedarburg for the summer. In a 1983 interview with a Cedarburg reporter, Schildknecht reported that he lived in the home of a barber Anton Ertl on Center Street, and from that backyard painted “Little Village.”6

In 1957 after retirement from his Indianapolis teaching position, Schildknecht and his wife Ruth, who had also been a teacher and sculptor at Arsenal, moved to Eastport, Maine. This is where they had spent summers since 1932 and where the artists lived out their lives. In 1970, Edmund Schildknecht
bequeathed his remaining lifework of 500 paintings and drawings to the University of Maine at Orono’s
Department of Art.7

In 1975 a University of Maine at Orono travelling exhibition of Schildknecht’s Wisconsin paintings made its way to the Charles Allis Art Museum in Milwaukee, and Carl and Rita Edquist of Cedarburg paid notice. With the Edquists’ inquiry and influence, nine of Schildknecht’s paintings of Cedarburg were able to be brought to Cedarburg as an extension of the original exhibition in 1975.8 The Edquists were especially interested in two watercolors that depicted the Columbia Mill that was being dismantled for the new Ozaukee Bank building in Cedarburg. Those two paintings of the Columbia Mill were their first acquisitions for a newly formed Carlson Fine Arts Foundation.9

Several years later, the Edquists visited the artist in Maine on two occasions, the last time in the fall of 1982.9 The Edquists made arrangements to acquire nine additional watercolor and oil paintings of Edmund Schildknecht for their foundation from the University of Maine collection in exchange for an art scholarship set up in the name of the artist and with the agreement that the paintings would be visably available to the community.10 The Schildknecht works had a public showing in Cedarburg in 1982 sponsored by the Carlson Fine Arts Foundation and in later years the works were donated to the Ozaukee Bank collection, which now forms the basis of the Cedarburg Art Museum Collection.

The curator of the UMO Collection of Schildknecht works says “Schildknecht falls into the category of a classic, more academic painter – a truly good classic painter … He doesn’t belong to the modern isms. Some of his best paintings, however, were the early ones which reflected the influence of his days in Paris.” 11 Schildknecht himself once stated, “I love nature, the landscape. If something strikes me, I must nail it down on canvas so that the viewer may sense my exhilaration. My work is a hymn to God, which is why I work outside. I may make a watercolor sketch and one day do it in oil. Gradually the scene on the canvas takes over, and I no longer see the original except in terms of certain details.”12

1Schroth, Tom. “An Old Artist from Eastport Brightens Our Lives,” Maine Life, July 1980: 49. Print.

2University of Maine Museum of Art, Educational Material, biographical info on the artist. Web. www.umma.umaine.edu/downloads/BioSchildknecht.pdf‎ 27 March 2013.

3 “Obertueffer, Noted Painter dies at 62.” The Milwaukee Journal. 14 May 1940: 1. Web. news.google.com 18 Jan. 2014.

4Schroth.

5University of Maine.

6Nelander, Betty. “Cedarburg art back home again,” News Graphic Pilot [Cedarburg, WI] 9 Feb. 1983: 5. Print.

7Newall, Robert H. “UMO given cache of paintings,” Bangor Daily News, 19-20 June 1976; Schroth: 48. Print.

8Edquist, Rita. Press release of information about Edmund Schildknecht paintings on loan to newly restored Washington House Inn, Cedarburg, 1984. Print.

9Nelander.

10Edquist, Carl W. and Hartgen, Vincent (curator of U of ME Orono Art Museum collection) letters, 1982.

11Schroth: 48-49.

12Newall.
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