Edgar Paxson

An artist of the vanishing West, Edgar Paxson was on the frontier just before Frederic Remington and Charles Russell, and his 1877 arrival in Montana occurred when Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce Indians were warring their way through Canada.  Paxson became a close friend of Russell, who arrived in Montana in 1880, and the two men became the state’s most famous early or pioneer resident artists.  Among the things they shared was a mutual pride at being self taught and a love of expressing aspects of Montana’s frontier history.

One of his major artistic subjects became the expedition of Lewis and Clark, which he completed in mural form, but his most sought after work are his small watercolors.