Western Cowboy & Indian Art

Cowboys captured American artists' visual imagination early on.

Western cowboy and Indian art is something of a niche genre, but one that is nonetheless highly sought after by collectors interested in America's Old West heritage, as well as art historians. Critic Robert Hughes even devotes an entire chapter to Western art in his landmark study, "American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America." The genre has its roots in the 19th century, when America began its westward expansion. Artists followed the explorers in order to document on canvas the relationship between the settlers of the New World and the Native Americans they found there.

Frederic Remington

Frederic Remington (1861-1909) was one of the pivotal representatives of the Western genre in American art. Remington's work is indicative of an early nostalgia for the Old West, which was already disappearing in the late 19th century when the artist first began to paint scenes of heroic fights between cowboys and Indians. Remington's work is probably the best known of all artists working in this genre, though Hughes argues that Remington's work is more illustrative than artistic.

Charles Marion Russell

The art of Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926) stems from his early youth when he worked as a cattle hand in Montana. His paintings of cowboys and ranch hands in action idealized the heroic attributes of the rough-and-tumble lifestyle that later Western movies would come to mimic.

Charles Bird King

Charles Bird King (1785-1862) was among the first artists in the New World to depict Native American Indians. His famous painting, "Young Omahaw, War Eagle, Little Missouri and Pawnees," is a respectful portrait of Pawnee Indian chiefs. It is widely attributed to the spread of the "noble savage" idea that many enlightened Europeans would come to hold of the Native American Indians.

George Catlin

George Catlin (1796-1872) was a self-taught artist who gave up a promising law career in order to venture out west alone in order to paint the Native Americans he met out there. One of his most famous paintings shows the artist himself surrounded by a tribe of Mandan Indians, who look on as he paints their group portrait.

Karl Bodmer

Though a Swiss artist, Karl Bodmer (1809-1893) nonetheless captured some of the most intriguing images of Native American Indians of the Old West. Whereas Catlin's style was more impressionistic, Bodmer's paintings, typically rendered in watercolor, were more detailed. Bodmer had been hired to travel alongside Prince Maximilian zu Wied, a naturalist who was very knowledgeable about American Indian tribes. Thus, Bodmer was able to catch details of Mandan Indian ornament that many of his forebears had missed in portraying Native Americans.

References

• "American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America;" Robert Hughes; 1997