Indian Pursuit

"Edgar Paxson's accomplishments have been overshadowed by those of his more famous Montana contemporary, Charles M. Russell, yet it was Paxson who first worked in the region. Born and raised in a quaker family in Pennsylvania, Paxson journeyed to Fort Hayes, Kansas in 1872, where he met Buffalo Bill Cody. By 1876 he had worked his way to Wyoming and was driving a freight wagon to Montana when General George Armstrong Custer was defeated at the Little Bighorn." By 1899, Paxson had received wider recognition for his epic masterwork, Custer's Last Stand, (Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming) an impressively scaled canvas measuring approximately five by eight feet and depicting over 200 figures. Throughout his career, Paxson completed several mural commissions, superb scenes depicting Native American life on the Plains, as well as intimate portraits. Upon his death, Charles M. Russell wrote "Paxson has gone, but his pictures will not allow us to forget him. The iron heel of civilization has stamped out nations of men, but it has never been able to wipe out pictures, and Paxson was one of the men gifted to make them." (R. Stewart, The American West: Legendary Artists of the Frontier, Dallas, Texas, 1986, p. 82)