Nick Eggenhofer

Born in the small Bavarian town of Gauting, Nick Eggenhofer spent his childhood fascinated by images he saw of the American West in German pulp magazines and in accounts of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West touring Germany in the early 20th century. He immigrated to Union City, New Jersey, in 1913 and began taking night classes in drawing at Cooper Union in New York City. A few years later, while working as an apprentice at the American Lithographic Company, Eggenhofer submitted three watercolors to Street & Smith, publishers of the pulp magazine Western Story. This marked the beginning of his career as a western illustrator; he went on to create countless covers for Western Story and illustrated more than 50 books. The artist did not actually visit the West until 1925, when he drove to Santa Fe in a Model T Ford. Instead, he used scale models that he constructed in his West Milford, New Jersey, studio to prepare his illustrations. In 1961 Eggenhofer moved to Cody, Wyoming, fulfilling a lifelong dream of living in the West.