Charles Graham (artist)

Charles S. Graham was born in Rock Island, Illinois in 1852. In the early 1870s, he worked as a topographer for the Northern Pacific Railway in Idaho and Montana.[1][2] Despite receiving no formal training as an artist, he was hired as a scenic artist for Hooley's Theater in Chicago. He then continued this work at several theaters in New York City.[1][3] Around 1877, he joined Harper & Brothers and became an illustrator for Harper's Weekly, touring and illustrating the American West.[1][2] He toured the Southern United States in 1886, illustrating a series of articles for Harper's on the New South.[2] In 1892, he became a freelancer, though he continued to contribute to Harper's, along with The Century Magazine, Collier's and the New York Herald.[1] Around this time his method shifted from pencil drawing and watercolor painting to oil painting.[1][3] He was designated the official artist of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.[2] Graham died in New York City on August 9, 1911.[1]