This print, by David Orrin Steinberger, dated January 1898, was
originally a large ink drawing that the artist donated to the
American Red Cross to be reproduced and sold for $1.00 each for
the relief of Cuban insurrectionistas and recontrados.
Clara Burton, the founder of the American Red Cross, had been in Cuba
with several assistants giving aid to those imprisoned
insurrectionists and their supporters who had been herded
into concentration camps in and around Havana, by order of
the former Spanish Governor General Wyler. Clara Barton
had dined aboard the USS Maine just 2 days before
the ship
exploded, killing 266 crewmen on February 15th, 1898.
On April 22, Cuba was blockaded by the US, and on the 23rd,
Spain declared war on the US., and on the 25th, the US
declared war on Spain, retroactive to the 22nd.
It is not known where the original of this print is,
how many copies of them were sold or how many of them still exist.
D. Orrin Steinberger was born March 25, 1857 and died December 12,
1945. He studied at the National Academy of design and Art League schools
and was an instructor in art at the Wittenberg College. He was an
illustrator for a number of magazines and periodicals. He was
mentored by the famous sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward. Shortly
after completing this picture, he became a correspondent for the
New York "Literary Digest" during the Spanish-American War. In
1900, he went to Colorado Springs, seeking a cure for tuberculosis
that he had contracted shortly after finishing this picture.
Told there was no cure, he went home to Urbana, Ohio and
convinced several friends to help him build a tree house 40
feet from the ground, in a large tree on his fathers farm.
He lived there for most of the rest of his life, naming it
"Camp-a-loft" and he became known as the "Hermit of Mad River".