The following information was submitted by Leigh F. W. Murphey, legal representative of the works of Carl Buergerniss:



Carl Buergerniss was born in Philadelphia in 1877 and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He exhibited at the Academy from 1901 to 1930. Despite his talent, it seems he relied more on his ability as a musician to provide a living.

Married in 1905, he taught piano, played the organ in the German Lutheran Church in Philadelphia and, in 1913, spent the summer in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as a hotel pianist.

During the Great Depression in the '30s, Buergerniss, like many other artists, got a job with the Index of American Design, the Federal Art Project of the...