William J. Schaldach Papers, 1937 - 1976

William Joseph Schadach (1896-1982) was a sportsman, writer, painter, graphic artist, and illustrator, who was especially interested in depicting birds and fish and scenes of hunting and fishing. Schaldach was born in Elkhart, Indiana. When he was twelve, his family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he graduated from Central High School. He early showed ability as an artist and took lessons as an adolescent. In 1919, he relocated to New York to study painting, where, after training at the Art Students League, he studied with teacher and artist Harry Wickey until the close of Wickey’s school in 1928. Schaldach, during his ten years in New York, began his successful career as an illustrator and writer. He went on to publish seven books, copies of most of which are in the Library: Fish by Schaldach: Collected Etchings, Drawings and Water Colors of Trout, Salmon and Other Game Fish (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1937), Coverts and Casts: Field Sports and Angling in Words and Pictures (NY: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1943), Currents and Eddies: Chips from the Log of an Artist-Angler (NY: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1944), Carl Rungius, Big Game Painter: Fifty Years with Brush and Rifle (West Hartford, VT: Countryman Press, 1945), Upland Gunning: Collected Etchings and Watercolors of Sport in the Field and Allied Subjects (NY: A.S. Barnes, and Co., 1946), Path to Enchantment: An Artist in the Sonoran Desert (NY: The Macmillan Co., 1963), and The Wind on your Cheek: More Chips from the Log of an Artist Sportsman (Rockville Centre, NY: Freshet Press, 1972).