Early Life and Education
Oscar Berninghaus was born on October 2, 1874 in St. Louis, Missouri. His father ran a lithography business, which stimulated an interest in watercolor painting in Oscar, who began by sketching the St. Louis riverfront. Later he worked from tales he heard from trappers and cowboys passing through, and developed a fascination with the American Old West.
As an artist, Berninghaus was largely self-taught. By 1886, he was an accomplished watercolorist. He developed an interest in business and sold his works to tourists and newspapers. At sixteen, he had quit school and taken a job with Compton & Sons, a local lithography company, where he learned the technical details of engraving, color separation and printmaking. In 1893, he left Compton & Sons and joined Woodward and Tiernan, one of the largest printing concerns in the world at the time.
Berninghaus attended night classes at Washington University in St. Louis and sketched and painted in his spare time.
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