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Former Pupil Biographies
Charles Stobie (1845-1931)
Charles S. Stobie Born in Baltimore in 1845, Stobie
attended the Maryland Institute in Baltimore and studied drawing and
painting for two years at Madras College in St. Andrew, Scotland. His
family moved to Chicago in 1862-63, and two years later Stobie
journeyed west to St. Lo uis and secured passage up the Missouri to
Nebraska City, where he hired out as a bullwhacker. Stobie quickly
became bored with the slow pace of the oxtrain and found employment
with a; horse-mule train at a stage station along the route to Fort
Kearney. The train skirmished with Indians three times east of Fort
Sedgwick and Stobie was credited with killing seven Indians. The fete
was noted in the Rocky Mountain News before his arrival in Denver, and
"from that time forward,".Stobie later said, "I never wanted for
employment, friends or money in Colorado." Stobie ably combined
scouting and painting, and in the winter of 1865 became intimately
acquainted with and sought advice from the well-known mountaineer
James P. Beckwourth, as well as Kit Carson, Mariano Medino, and James
Baker. |
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During the spring of 1866 Stobie crossed Berthoud Pass and lived with
Nevava's band of Utes in Middle Park While living with the Utes Stobie was
a member of a war party that took seven scalps in a skirmish with a band
of Cheyenne and Arapaho near Grand Lake. Stobie was adopted into the tribe
and known as Paghaghet or Long Hair. It was at this time that Stobie,
rugged yet sensitive, began to paint and sketch in earnest, particularly
the Middle Park region. In the fall he was back in Denver as a scenic
artist and actor, and displayed some large landscape paintings with Middle
park subject matter in the offices of the Rocky Mountain News.
In 1868 Stobie was again in Indian country as a scout for Major Jacob
Downing's expedition against the Cheyenne and Arapaho, and established a
studio over the Tambien Saloon at 355 Larimer Street, where he specialized
in portraits and l andscapes. In 1869 Stobie returned to scouting once
again and assisted in the marking the location of the White River Ute
agency in northwest Colorado. Stobie was an active buffalo hunter in
addition to guiding and interpreting throughout the upper Colorado river
region, and when he wasn't afield, he was painting and promoting his work,
and associating with other frontier figures like himself. In the fall of
1875, for some unknown reason, he returned to Chicago.
From 1875 until his death in 1931 Stobie painted mainly at his Chicago
studio, moving back to Denver intermittently, once in 1900, where he
wielded his brush at 1605 Larimer until 1902, as well as irregularly
visiting the southwestern part of the state. Among Colorado contemporaries
Stobie was an artist of recognized ability. A writer for the Denver Post
observed at the turn of the century the Stobie was a "rare painter of
western life and scenery with all the charm and romantic passion that only
those who love it, know how to throw into pictures of the West." Among the
Ute tribe he was always a great favourite, and in general his attention to
detail in the case of Indian dress and village life remains a valuable
record Coloradoans are particularly indebted to Stobie for his vivid and
colourful paintings of the state and its inhabitants.
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