Most people know of the names of the great Indian tribes, such as the Commanche, Sioux, Apache and many others, while chiefs such as Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Geronimo and Chief Joseph, have become equally famous universally. Artists in America during the 19th century depicted Indians in their paintings, concerned with describing their appearances, customs and ways of life. They also presented the best-known images of Western life. The most important painters of this time, Frederic Remington and Charles Marion Russell, were technically accurate and also sensational. They represented scenes of cowboys and Indians, gamblers, gunfighters, saloons and all the paraphernalia of the Hollywood Western.

Frederic Remington had formal training at the Yale School of Art and at the Art Students' League before he went West for health reasons. He was primarily an illustrator, working for many magazines such as Harper's Weekly and Outing. In the Spanish-American War he served as a war correspondent and artist. He had an unusual approach to color: he used it extremely successfully to set a mood, to strike an atmospheric note. He often chose a single dominant color, applying paint richly and roughly, around which the rest of the picture was composed. During the last twenty years of his life he executed a powerful series of twenty-four bronzes to great success, which also helped raise Remington to a position of real significance in the history of 19th-century American art. His first, "Bronco Buster" (1895, one casting in New-York Historical Society, New York City) displays the vigor and sense of movement of his paintings. His subsequent bronzes, such as "Comin' Through the Rye" (1902, Metropolitan Museum), in which four cowhands on horseback charge at the observer in glee, are daring for their technical skill in suspending large figures on slim supports, in this case on the hooves of the horses. Among the books he wrote and illustrated are "Pony Tracks" (1895), "Crooked Trails" (1898), and "The Way of an Indian" (1906). He died in 1909, having produced nearly three thousand paintings.