The Center for Western Studies

"The Escape" Gouache, 1906

"Halt" Oil/Board, 1899

Edgar S. Paxson was born in upstate New York. After completing school, he went into business with his father, who was a sign painter and decorator. Other than the training he received from his father, there is no evidence of any formal instruction.

Paxson was always fascinated by frontier life and had a great longing to see the West, so in 1877 he left his wife and child in New York and went to Montana. There he became employed on ranches, learning the tricks of surviving the range's variable weather and occasional Indian conflicts. Two years after he arrived in Montana, he sent for his family. They resided in Butte for twenty-four years.

Through his rustic journey West, his ranch work, and his experiences as a scout in the Nez Perce War of 1877-78, Paxson truly lived the "Wild West" as portrayed in literature, movies, and television. His experiences became the inspiration and the subjects for his work, from small sketches in his journal to monumental murals.

Paxson began simply by sketching, for which he had a natural talent. Without any academic training in the arts, he was able to capture the movement and characteristics of the Western frontier. His subject matter typically ranges from Native Americans to historical battles, from hunting scenes to early exploration. Because of the rapidly occurring changes in Montana, he felt the necessity to record the West before it became unrecognizable. His works are nostalgic, romantic, and sentimental yet are of historical importance.

His works are held by the Whitney Gallery of Western Art, the C.M. Russell Museum, Montana County Courthouse, the University of Montana, and the Anshutz Collection. His famous mural of Custer's Last Stand hangs in the rotunda of the Montana State Capitol Building. .

Ogden Pleissner was born in Brooklyn, New York, and studied figure painting and portraiture at Manhattan's Art Students League. Despite growing up in the city, he was attracted to the outdoors and as a teen, he visited dude ranches in Wyoming, where he sketched from life. These first experiences in the American West were to influence Pleissner's career indelibly and led to his lifelong interest in hunting, fishing, and the outdoors.

Pleissner wanted to be classified as a landscape painter first, who also lived to hunt and fish. During World War II, he painted Aleutian bases for the United States Air Force and illustrated the Normandy Invasion for Life Magazine.

His work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and hangs in the offices of the Pentagon, West Point, and the Air Force Academy.

Born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Burt Proctor showed early interest in the "Wild West" and became a well-known desert and Western scene painter, with horses as a specialty.

Of his early talent, it was said he painted horses before he could walk, and he became a skillful rider. In 1908, he moved to Oak Park, Illinois, and enrolled in the Chicago Art Institute. At the age of 17, he went west, to the Little Big Horn Basin in Wyoming and then to Stanford University to study mining engineering. His career as a federal employee took him to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

In 1920, he lived in both Pasadena and New York City, and worked as an illustrator for the advertising firm of Lord, Thomas, and Logan. Unsure about the direction of his art career, he returned to Los Angeles and enrolled at the Chouinard and Otis Art Institutes. Trying to find his own style, he became a hermit, working in isolation in his studio for five years. He strove for a sense of design, simplicity, and proportion. His subjects range from marine to desert landscapes, and include his early experiences in the Grand Canyon and Navajo Country, as well as in New Mexico and California.

"Moving Camp" Watercolor, 1897

"The Palace" Watercolor, 1920

"The Picture Man Has Spoken", Watercolor/Ink, 1909

"Moving On" Watercolor/Gouache, 1908

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Charles M. Russell pursued many interests: Westerner, historian, advocate of the Northern Plains Indians, cowboy, outdoorsman, writer, philosopher, environmentalist and conservationist, and artist. He was not a good student growing up, and his parents tried in vain to discipline him by sending him to a military school in New Jersey. After one semester, they gave up, ending his formal education. In 1880, a few days before his sixteenth birthday, he came to the Judith Basin of Montana. He fell in love with the area, which would become his home for the next forty-six years. Shortly thereafter, he became a night wrangler. This was exactly what he wanted and needed. It gave him time to observe the cowboys at work during the day and to sketch and document the activities and excitement of the cow camp. During this time, Russell also teamed up with a local hunter, and spent two years sharing his cabin. He continued to work as a cowboy and wrangler for eleven years, before retiring to become a full-time artist.

His years as a cowboy were to be very important to his art. His firsthand experiences and his intimate knowledge of the cowboy's tools and ways were to produce the distinctive realism that is characteristic of his style. He portrayed actual events and people in his paintings. Many legends and stories of the west that he often used in his works were originally heard by Russell in evening discussions and camp talk during his years as a cowboy. He was also a fervent admirer of the American Indian and often portrayed them at heroic figures, struggling to preserve their way of life.

Charles Russell completed approximately 4,000 works of art during his lifetime. He was the first Western artist to live the majority of his life in the west. For this reason, he knew his subject matter intimately, setting the standard for many Western artists to follow.

Major collections of his work are found in the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana Historical Society, Amon Carter Museum, Gilcrease Museum, and National Cowboy Hall of Fame.

Sherry Salari Sander grew up in Northern California and attended Shasta College, where she pursued an interest in the arts. She later moved to Montana and studied art at the Flathead Valley Community College. She first worked as a professional potter and is now a sculptor. She continues to live and sculpt in the Kalispell area.

Her works are included in many serious Western Art collections around the world.