Initially trained as a lawyer, George Catlin abandoned that career in favor of art, which he first pursued in Philadelphia in 1821. Receiving instruction from Charles Wilson Peale and possibly Thomas Sully, he began to specialize in portraiture in Philadelphia and New York City. His first real interest in depicting Indians occurred when a delegation of chiefs en route to Washington affected him profoundly with their “silent and stoic dignity.” Equally impressed with their exotic appearance, he decided to make them the subject of his life’s work. As he put it, “the history and customs of such people, preserved by pictorial illustrations, are themes worthy the lifetime of one man, and nothing short of the loss of my life, shall prevent me from visiting their country and of becoming their historian.”

In 1832 Catlin traveled up the Missouri River aboard the steamer “Yellowstone,” first painting portraits of famous chiefs and then switching his attention to rituals, dances, feasts, everyday activities, the hunt and the chase. Throughout the next four years he continued to make periodic excursions into the unsettled West, producing an extraordinary documentary of his wilderness travels. By 1847 he had visited over 48 indigenous tribes and painted from life some 500 portraits and other studies depicting Indian life. Catlin, ever the lecturer and promoter, assembled this large collection along with countless costumes, artifacts and other paraphernalia, and took it first to New York where it met with much success. In 1839, what became known as the Catlin Indian Gallery traveled to England finding the favor of Queen Victoria’s Court. In 1844, the Gallery visited King Louis Phillippe in Paris. Thrilled with the display, the king provided exhibition room for the Gallery in the Louvre and commissioned fifteen Indian paintings from the artist.

Plagued by financial difficulties throughout his career, Catlin, in the late 1840’s, began producing bound volumes of drawings for sale. Today the drawings are highly prized for the accurate depiction of Indian beadwork, costumes, feathered headdresses and tomahawks.

Before Catlin concluded his long career, he had captured on canvas virtually every aspect of Indian life in both North and South America. For him the American West was “the great and almost boundless garden spot of the earth, over whose green enameled fields, as . . . free as the ocean’s waves, Nature’s proudest, noblest men have pranced on their wild horses, and extended, through a series of ages, their long arms in orisons of praise to the Great Spirit in the sun, for the freedom and happiness of their existence.” Catlin continued as a tireless champion of the Native American until his death in 1872.

A member of the second generation of Hudson River School painters, Samuel Colman, a native of Maine, was raised in New York City. His father owned a successful publishing business, where the young Colman was exposed to fine art prints. In New York he studied briefly with Asher B. Durand, and by 1860 had embarked on the first of several trips to Europe. He visited France, Italy, and Switzerland, and was one of the first American artists to paint in the more remote locales of Spain and Morocco. Upon his return he had several exhibitions of the paintings done abroad. He became a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1862.
Colman was not so much intent on recording a specific locale as in offering the viewer a respite from the cares of daily life. As Colman’s teacher Durand noted in regard to one of his own similarly pastoral landscapes:
To the rich merchant and capitalist…released from the world-struggle, so far as to allow a little time to rest and reflect in, landscape art especially appeals…. in spite of the discordant clamor and conflict of the crowded city, the true landscape becomes a thing of more than outward beauty….It becomes companionable, holding silent converse with the feelings…touching a chord that vibrates to the inmost recesses of the heart.
His works are widely held by public and private collections.

Daughter of Revolutionary war leader Ralph Izard, Charles Deas, known primarily for his paintings of early Indians and frontier life on the Great Plains.

Gerard Curtis Delano was born in Marion, Massachusetts, the descendant of a 1621 Pilgrim. He began studying art in New Bedford, Massachusetts and went on to become the pupil of George Bridgman at the Art Students League in New York and of Dean Cornwell, Harvey Dunn and N.C. Wyeth at the Grand Central School of Art. Following his education he became a successful commercial artist and illustrator working mostly in New York City until WWI.

He first visited the West in 1919, working as a hand on a Colorado ranch. At the age of thirty he homesteaded at Cataract Creek in Colorado, building his own dirt-roof studio. He devoted much of his time to painting and commuted to New York for commercial art assignments. In 1933 during the Great Depression, he sold everything and moved west permanently. Four years later he sold Western Story Magazine a series of illustrated articles on the development of the West.

After 1940, Delano was able to finally spend all of his time painting. In 1943 he visited the Navajo Reservation. “Arizona’s picturesque settings provide to my mind the greatest possible opportunity for pictorial beauty. The people are themselves naturally artistic. I feel a great sympathy for them. They have survived a life of hardship, yet have done so with heads held proudly high.” He fell so in love with the Navajo and their culture that he painted them almost exclusively for the remainder of his days.

His art is exceptional due, in part, to the strong sense of design, the color, and the simplicity of composition.

William Herbert “Buck” Dunton was born in Augusta, Maine in 1878. In his youth Dunton worked as a ranch hand before choosing art as his true calling. He studied at Cowles Art School in Boston, Massachusetts. He also studied at the Arts Students League in New York in 1912 where he was a pupil of Joseph De Camp and E.L. Blumenschein.

Having learned of the art community in Taos through Blumenschein, Dunton moved there in 1912 and opened his summer studio. He was invited to join Ernest Blumenschein, Joseph Henry Sharp, Bert Greer Phillips and Eanger Irving Couse in the formation of the prestigious Taos Society of Artists.

Working through the winter as a successful illustrator for such popular magazines as Harper’s and Scribner’s, he spent his summers sketching the West and absorbing Western life to feed his imagination. The pressure of the magazines and their deadlines drove him to move permanently to Taos in 1921.

“When I was a little boy and lived in Maine, I read everything about the West I could get my hands on – not dime novels, but everything authentic. I lived the life in prospect. Then I lived it in actuality, living with cowpunchers in Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona – all along the cattle strip. Now that those days are gone, I live it in retrospect and in my pictures.”

His works are held by many important museums and collections including the Amon Carter Museum, the Anschutz Collection, Witte Memorial Museum, and the White House.

Like many artists of this era, Farny had a background in fine art but found himself earning his bread executing illustrations for various publications. What sets Farny apart from many other artists is the fact that he has shown that as an illustrator he can produce “fine art.”

His first job came as an apprentice with a lithography firm in Cincinnati. His family had located there in 1859 having moved from Alsace, France. By 1865, Farny had his first illustrations in Harper’s Weekly. Determined to strengthen his artistic talents, he went to Europe in 1866 to study at the Dhsseldorf Academy. There he studied under Mih<ly Munk<csy and then in Munich with Wilhelm von Diez.

Three years later he was back in Cincinnati resuming his work in illustration. His art appeared on circus posters, illustrations for Guffey's Readers and a variety of other publications. In wasn't until 1881, at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation of the Sioux that he discovered the subject that was to hold his interest until his last days. In the following thirteen years the artist made four more journeys West to gather material for his paintings. In these three-month long periods he traveled through the plains and mountains, and ventured into the South and Northwest portions of the country gaining an intimate knowledge of the landscape and indigenous people of the West.

Back in Cincinnati he worked in his studio turning the photographs, sketches, and artifacts from these ventures into his Indian paintings. Much of Farny's art depicts his subject in their natural nomadic setting and not on the reservations that they had been confined to. It is a testament to the skill and imagination of the artist that the paintings have the "freshness" and the look of having been painted on the spot and not a sterile studio setting, where many of them were executed. As well, Farny depicted the life of the Indians as exotic, idyllic, and free of poverty, disease or the malaise and doom that plagued them. He was sympathetic, not overtly Romantic, in his attitude and approach to his subjects. For these reasons, his paintings hold an important amount of anthropological information and tell of a life that has been permanently and irreparably changed. His reputation as a painter has steadily increased and today he is certainly considered a Fine Artist.

Born in Austria, Fleck studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Art and the School of Graphic Art in Vienna. He was winning awards at the Kansas City Art Institute by 1923, with a one-man show in Houston in 1930 and Paris and Chicago in 1931. During the depression he made his living by painting government-sponsored murals and then went on to become the Dean of Fine Arts at the University of Kansas City.

In 1924, the Taos Society of Artists launched an exhibit of New Mexico paintings in Kansas City. Fleck was so intrigued by this show that he moved to Taos where he remained for the rest of his life.

His works are held by the Carnegie Museum of Fine Art, Witte Memorial Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Art, Museum of New Mexico, War Department Museum, the Fort Worth Museum and many important private collections throughout the world.

Rather than take the well trod and fashionable path to Paris for formal training in the arts, Armin Hansen choose to book his passage to Hamburg. There he was close to the roots of his family, both his father and grandfather were trained in the arts in their homeland of Germany. While at the Royal Akademie in Stuttgart, Hansen studied under Carlos Grethe, an important member of the Sezessionist Movement. There he learned to paint from the German Impressionists and developed a style that relied on a dark and more somber palate.

In 1912, after six years abroad, Hansen felt it was time to take his skills back to the states.
He returned to San Francisco where he was born and where his father, Herman Hansen the western painter and illustrator, was still living, and immediately set up a studio. In San Francisco he joined the excitement of the upcoming Panama-Pacific International Exhibition. Scheduled to open in February of 1915 Hansen set to work preparing paintings for submission. At the time of the opening he had six etchings and two paintings submitted. His hard work paid off with two silver medals won for his paintings.

In1916, Hansen moved his studio south to Monterey. There he painted some of his most memorable and highly sought pieces. Scenes of the sardine industry with Portuguese and Sicilian fisherman going about their trade were some of his favorite subjects. His paintings from Monterey found their way into galleries up and down the coast and, on occasion, in New York. In 1948 he was given full membership into the National Academy of Design.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, John Hauser studied at the Ohio Mechanic’s Institute and at the Cincinnati Art Association before he reached the age of fifteen. Deciding to pursue his love of art, he became the pupil of Thomas A. Noble at the McMicken Art School in 1873. Furthering his studies, he moved to Germany when he was twenty-two years old and became the pupil of Nicholas Gysis at the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Munich.

After returning to America in 1891, Hauser traveled extensively throughout New Mexico and Arizona, adopting as his specialty the American Indian. He made yearly visits to the reservations, painting portraits of documentary accuracy and genre scenes of Indians in canoes and on horseback.

Hauser so earned the admiration and respect of those Indians that he painted and worked with, that he was officially adopted into the Sioux nation in 1901 and given the Indian name “Straight White Shield.”

Ernest Martin Hennings demonstrated artistic promise at an early age, and was encouraged by his teachers and his mother. He graduated with honors from the Art Institute of Chicago in June 1904. He was awarded an “American Traveling Scholarship” in June 1906 “as a prize for excellence in drawing, painting, and composition,” but this he declined as he wanted to begin a career as a commercial artist.

By 1912 he was becoming somewhat bored with commercial art and began thinking about devoting himself to more serious original work. He entered the Prix de Rome for that year, earning a close second place to Eugene Savage. Immediately after this, Hennings began preparations to travel to Munich to study at the Royal Academy with Walter Thor, Angelo Jank, and Franz von Stuck.

It was at the American Artists Club where he met Walter Ufer and Victor Higgins, with whom he would remain lifelong friends. Hennings’ work eventually came to the attention of Carter H. Harrison, the former mayor of Chicago. Harrison, a patron of the arts and a sportsman, had hunted in the Taos area and consequently was acquainted with the land and the young art colony. Harrison brought Hennings to the attention of a Chicago group that encouraged promising young artists. They suggested he move to Taos and after showing Hennings pictures of New Mexico, they apparently had little difficulty convincing the artist to make the journey. Hennings set up his studio in Taos and began painting some of his most successful canvases. During this time he was awarded many major prizes and won national recognition.

Those who knew E. Martin Hennings say that his works are a reflection of his life and personality . . . calm, peaceful, and well ordered. His paintings are a visual presentation of the mystique of northern New Mexico . . . of Taos, it’s diversity of peoples, and the fascinating history of the early days of the art colony. In many of his paintings, Hennings has made time stand still for us, and enabled us to see and understand what inspired and motivated him more than fifty years ago.