Winold Reiss

Born in Germany, Winold Reiss grew up in the Black Forest and came to be a foremost American painter of Indian portraits.  He is also considered a modernist, a part of the Art Deco vanguard.

In Munich, he studied at the Royal Academy and the Art School, and having been impressed by novels of James Fenimore Cooper, came to the United States in 1913 with the purpose of painting Indians like those he had read about.

He arrived in New York City with little money and realized he was still a distance from Indian country, so he first got established as a portrait, landscape, and mural painter, art teacher, and interior designer.