Curator’s Corner

From Cowboy to Costume Designer: Joe De Yong and the Art Behind Hollywood’s Westerns Before Clint Eastwood donned his poncho or John Wayne rode into the sunset, there was a young cowboy from Oklahoma with a sketchpad and a dream. Joe De Yong’s life reads like a Hollywood script: cowboy, artist, silent film actor, survivor, and ultimately the bridge between Western art and the golden age of Western cinema. But unlike many stars on the silver screen, De Yong never craved the spotlight. Instead, he worked behind the scenes, shaping the imagery of the American West that generations of moviegoers [...]

Cowboys are back. From streaming sensations like Yellowstone and 1883 to Oscar-nominated films like The Power of the Dog, the American West is once again galloping through our cultural imagination. But this isn't the first time the West has captured our collective attention—nor is it a new story. Long before cameras rolled in Monument Valley or grizzled heroes rode into dusty towns, the mythology of the West was painted in oils and sculpted in bronze. Artists like Frederic Remington and Charles Russell didn’t just illustrate the frontier, they invented the visual language that would define it for generations to come. [...]

At first glance, Charles Russell’s Trouble Hunters might appear to be exactly what it seems: a dynamic portrayal of a war party riding across the rugged Montana terrain, bathed in a rich, golden light. But for Sid Richardson Museum Director Scott Winterrowd, the painting held a mystery just below the surface—literally. What started as a hunch led to a journey through art history, scientific analysis, and the mind of a self-taught Western master. Beneath the vibrant brushstrokes and heroic figures lies a story of artistic revision and discovery, centered around a legendary warrior named White Quiver. As it turns out, [...]

Featured in our current exhibit, Remington and Russell in Black and White, is a drawing of a seemingly unusual sight: a soldier jumping on to a horse! This drawing is one of three images of horse acrobatics featured in an 1898 Harper’s New Monthly Magazine article, “The Essentials at Fort Adobe,” written and illustrated by Remington. The Fort Adobe he refers to in the article is actually Fort Robinson, a military post in Nebraska established in the early 1870s. Remington’s title was likely drawn from the adobe barracks that were built in 1887 to house the officers stationed there.   [...]

Our current exhibition, Remington and Russell in Black in White, examines both artists’ careers in illustration at the turn of the 20th century. Many of the artworks featured in the show are painted in grisaille, which is an art term for grayscale. These black and white works specifically functioned as the source for reproduction in books and magazines of Remington and Russell’s day. Both artists were very deliberate in how and why they were making these artworks to help tell the story of the American West as they imagined it. Let’s first take a closer look at Remington’s illustration career. [...]

During his time as a regular illustrator, apart from his documentation of the American Indian Wars and the Spanish American War, Frederic Remington was often sent out on assignment to capture the daily routines of the cavalry. In 1893, he traveled out west to Yellowstone National Park to write and illustrate an article about the 6th Cavalry patrols in the park to prevent poaching, including the dwindling bison herd that was supposed to be protected there.   “Policing the Yellowstone,” Frederic Remington, Harper’s Weekly, January 12, 1895   Remington’s article appeared in the January 12, 1895 issue of [...]

The Golden Age of American illustration wasn’t limited to popular periodicals of the era. Charles Russell and Frederic Remington also contributed illustrations for different book projects. In 1902, Remington painted Days on the Range to serve as the frontispiece for Alfred Henry Lewis’s book Wolfville Days. The scene portrayed in Remington’s canvas relates to the 19th chapter in the book, “When the Stage was Stopped.” In this last section of the book, the narrator describes a long-winded tale about stagecoach robberies and holdups. In the story, the townspeople of Wolfville devise a scheme to trick one of the suspected bandits, [...]

The Golden Age of American Illustration began in the 1880s and lasted into the mid-twentieth century. During this time, New York replaced London as the center of illustrated periodicals published in the English language. Technological advances allowed for inexpensive yet high quality images to be reproduced easily and distributed to a wide audience through magazines like the popular Harper’s Magazine, Century Magazine, and Collier’s. And Frederic Remington and Charles Russell were on hand to contribute their art! Remington’s first commercial illustration appeared in an 1882 issue of Harper’s Weekly, and just a handful of years later, Russell’s first illustration was [...]

Though Frederic Remington and Charles Russell are known today as fine artists, both worked as illustrators throughout their careers, creating paintings en grisaille, or in black & white, intended for reproduction to accompany stories and text. Our new exhibition – Remington and Russell in Black and White – features an array of both artists’ original greyscale masterworks paired with their counterparts printed in magazines and books. During Remington & Russell’s time, illustrated magazines and books garnered wide popularity in the U.S., and thus earned the moniker The Golden Age of American Illustration, which began in the 1880s and lasted into [...]

Recently, I was spending some time walking with a colleague around our current exhibition, Charles M. Russell: Storyteller Across Media. We were lingering in one corner of the gallery that highlights a collection of objects and artworks centered around the subject of “counting coup.” What is counting coup? Counting coup was a system of graduated points wherein the first man to touch an enemy was awarded a first coup or “direct hit.” To count coup, one might use his hand, bow, lance, or perhaps rattles or whips.   Charles M. Russell | Counting Coup (Medicine Whip) | 1902 | [...]