(Cave Paintings - Font-de-Gaume male and female reindeer)

John William Winkler

This composition was done after the drawings of Paleolithic cave paintings in France and Spain done by archeologist Henri 'Abbe' Breuil (French: 1877-1961). These reindeer are painted on the walls of the Font-de-Gaume Cave in Southwest France. Breuil was the first person to determine the age of these caves' works and methodically document them, using a 38 foor long sheet of paper onto which he sketched the animals as reference for future compositions. Here, Winkler faithfully recreates Bueil's work by hand, lending a worn softness to the work.

The Museum of the Origins of Man, Italy describes this work on their website as a "Scene of a couple of reindeer. The male, larger, bends down to lick the forehead of the female. This is a very rare scene in rock art." This "scene" is among the most well known of Font-de-Gaume cave due to its portrayal of gentle intimacy.

These two reindeer are engraved into the cave wall and only exhibit the barest traces of pigment after many millenia. The original deer are nearly touching, with the male deer bent toward the lowered forehead of his kneeling mate. It appears that the color shown here was filled in by Breuil in the manner of other works found this and other Paleolithic caves.

John William Winkler was a lamplighter in San Francisco and his route took him through San Francisco’s Chinese quarter where he discovered an exotic community. According to Mary Millman and Dave Bohn, Winkler spent “every spare weekday moment and every Saturday and Sunday there for about seven years.” He created around seventy plates depicting the streets, architecture, inhabitants, vendors, and moments of rest or leisure. In his etchings, he captured vignettes of a lifestyle that was quickly vanishing and his subjects were always rendered with dignity and respect.

John William Winkler, called "Winks" by his friends, was born in Vienna, Austria on July 30, 1890. He departed Austria in 1910, changed his name to John William Joseph Winkler on a forged passport (his surname was Von Kertzl), and immigrated to the United States. Winkler claimed to have been born in the year 1894 but he most likely changed his birth year along with his name on his counterfeit passport. He enrolled in the Mark Hopkins Art Institute (later to become the San Francisco Art Institute) in 1912 and produced his first etching the following year. Winkler became a naturalized citizen in 1921.

Winkler was a member of and exhibited with the Chicago Society of Etchers, the California Society of Etchers, the Society of American Graphic Artists, the San Francisco Art Association, and the Printmakers Society of California. In 1920 he won one of three Logan Purchase Prizes from the Chicago Society of Etchers. Winkler was elected an Associate in the National Academy of Design in 1936 and to full Academician in 1951. One of the highest tributes he received was from his friend and fellow etcher, John Taylor Arms, who proclaimed Winkler to be the “master of line, the master of us all.”

In 1955, an exhibition of Winkler’s etchings was mounted at the Kunstzaal Binsbergen in Arnhem, Holland and, in 1974, a solo exhibition of his etchings, drawings, and carved boxes was displayed at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. The Brooklyn Museum presented John W. Winkler: Drawings, Prints, Boxes in 1979.

John William Winkler's work is represented in the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas; the National Gallery, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; the Boston Public Library; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington; the Metropolitan Museum, the New York Public Library, New York; the Oakland Museum of California; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the San Francisco Public Library; the Clark Museum, Williamstown, Massachusetts; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

J.W. Winkler died in El Cerrito, California on January 26, 1979.