Two Scouts Watching Custer's Command by Edgar Paxson (bio below)

16 x 20 Inch Open Edition Fine Art Giclee Print Printed on High-Quality Art Canvas.

This item will arrive fully stretched, museum wrapped, ready to hang with or without additional framing. 

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About this image

Two Scouts Watching Custer's Command by Edgar Samuel Paxson

Two Scouts Watching Custer's Command, Big Horn by Edgar Samuel Paxson

The Battle of Little Bighorn was an armed engagement between combined forces of Lakota, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, against the 7th Cavalry Regiment of the United States Army. The battle, which occurred on June 25 and 26, 1876 near the Little Bighorn River in eastern Montana Territory, was the most prominent action of the Great Sioux War of 1876. It was an overwhelming victory for the Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho, led by several major war leaders, including Crazy Horse and Gall, inspired by the visions of Sitting Bull. The U.S. Seventh Cavalry, including the Custer Battalion, a force of 700 men led by George Armstrong Custer, suffered a severe defeat. Five of the Seventh Cavalry's companies were annihilated; Custer was killed, as were two of his brothers, a nephew, and a brother-in-law. The total U.S. casualty count, including scouts, was 268 dead and 55 injured.

Public response to the Great Sioux War varied at the time. The battle, and Custer's actions in particular, have been studied extensively by historians.

Edgar S. Paxon Biography

E.S. Paxson was an early Montana painter of western frontier life and Indian portraits.

Paxson was born in East Hamburg, New York, near Buffalo.  After his schooling, he worked in his father's carriage business painting carriages and lettering signs.  There is no evidence he had any other art training.

Paxson longed for the kind of western adventure he read about as a youth, and at age 25 he left his wife and child in Buffalo and headed for Montana Territory.  There he worked as a ranch hand, stage driver, hunter, guide, military scout and other frontier jobs that immersed him in the work and experience of western settlement. 

In 1879 he sent for his family and moved to Deer Lodge, Montana where he painted signs, theater backdrops, saloon decorations, and other commercial art.  In 1881 the Paxsons settled in Butte where the mining boom provided more business opportunity.  He continued to do commercial painting, but he also established a studio and spent more time at easel painting.  Paxon served for ten years in the Montana National Guard and spent eight months in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War.  In 1905, he moved to Missoula where he lived the remainder of his life.

By the end of the nineteenth century, Paxson made his living primarily from easel painting.  He worked in oil and watercolor in a detailed, representational style similar to that of Charles M. Russell who became a close friend.  In 1899, he completed his most famous painting, a six by ten foot canvas entitled Custer's Last Battle on the Little Big Horn.  He started researching the battle shortly after arriving in Montana, interviewing Indians who had participated in it and soldiers who had first arrived on the scene.  It took Paxson six years to complete the painting which he then toured around the eastern US, charging twenty-five cents to view it.

In 1911, Paxson received a commission to paint six murals of Montana history for the State Senate chambers in Helena.  The next year, the Missoula County commission hired him to paint eight murals for the county courthouse showing scenes from the Lewis and Clark expedition and early pioneer life.  Paxson was considered especially qualified for this work because he had both observed and participated in the settlement of Montana and his paintings were said to capture the true appearance of that time and place.