Max Gundlach (1863‒1957)

About the Artist

Affectionately known as “Grandpa Moses,” Max Gundlach only received recognition for his elegant and skilled oil paintings in the last decades of his life. Born in Germany in 1863, he immigrated to the United States with his family when he was only five years old, most likely settling in Chicago. Only a few years later, he began work at a wood engraving shop, where his natural talents quickly allowed him to advance from simply making the engravings to designing them. He went to art school at night. After ten years at the wood engraving shop, Gundlach became a commercial artist. He toured the Southwest briefly to paint landscape scenes for the Santa Fe and Union Pacific railroads and became known as a “genius at decorating ‘railroad’ folders.”1