Artists of the Old West

Artists of the Old West by John C. Ewers

Enlarged edition with 194 illustrations, including 44 color.

Here is the most vivid and authentic visual record of the Old West —that vast new world across the wide Mississippi as seen between 1819 and 1893 by twenty-two outstanding artist-explorers. Among the painters whose stories are told in these pages are Titian Peale, Charles Bird King, Peter Rindisbacher, Karl Bodmer, George Caleb Bingham, George Catlin, Alfred Miller, Richard Kern, Rudolph Kurz, Gustavus Sohon, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Remington and Charles Russell.

Guided by an expert in the art of the West and in Indian life, we meet the Plains Indians in all their glory, buffaloes and buffalo hunters, Rocky Mountain trappers, fort-based Indian traders, emigrants on the trail, California gold-seekers, and cowboys as they were before the open range was fenced off forever. We see the great plains, the mountains, the broad rivers and wildlife as they looked when the first white men came upon them.

The pictures have been selected with an eye to their historical importance and reliability as well as their quality as art.

Some of them, such as the works by Kurz and Bodmer, both of them Swiss, Sohon, a German, Moran, an Englishman, and by several Indian artists have rarely appeared in books for the general reader. Although the author admires both Remington and Russell, he does not hesitate to challenge works in which they reconstruct Indian scenes inaccurately. The result is a collection that will appeal to everyone interested in life in the Old West as well as art in America.

The superb reproductions, drawn from many sources, were engraved and printed in Milan.

Hardcover with dust jacket

Author: John C. Ewers

Edition/Year: 1982, Doubleday & Company

Condition: Good vintage condition, dust jacket shows signs of wear

Dimensions: 12" x 9.75"