Henry Raschen

Henry Raschen became one of America’s leading painters of Native American figures and portraits in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After immigrating to California with his family in 1868, he studied art in San Francisco under Charles Nahl, Virgil Williams, and Joseph Harrington. Seeking advanced training, Raschen traveled to Munich in the late 1870s, where he joined a community of California artists, befriended William Merritt Chase, and traveled throughout Italy and France.
Returning to San Francisco in 1883, Raschen spent years traveling with landscape painter Carl von Perbandt among Native American communities in California and the Southwest, developing a reputation for vivid, lifelike paintings. He later established a successful studio and teaching career in Munich and won a gold medal at the 1898 Munich Exposition.
Raschen’s firsthand experiences included accompanying General Nelson A. Miles during the capture of Apache leader Geronimo and later sketching him at Fort Sill. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Raschen relocated to Oakland, where he continued painting until his death in 1937.