Vintage bison engraving exhibit opens at the Hockaday

The Hockaday Museum of Art announces the opening of a new exhibition, “The Surging, Thundering Herd: Vintage Bison Engravings.” These early artworks, drawn from the Lee Silliman Print Collection, are on a statewide tour through the Montana Art Gallery Directors’ Association. The exhibit features 51 original engravings depicting the iconic mammal of the American frontier West—the buffalo.

The pieces in the collection span 152 years. Some were created by European artists who never saw the animal, and others by artists who witnessed these massive beasts in the wild before their near extinction in the 1880s. Many images were drawn from popular 19th century American periodicals, such as Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Prominent frontier painters whose derivative prints appear in the exhibit include Frederic Remington, George Catlin and Karl Bodmer.

The exhibition includes early copper plate engravings, wood engravings, chromolithographs, and early 1900s color lithographic postcards.

Many aspects of the bison story are illuminated in this exhibit: the animal in its wild state amongst its natural enemies; techniques for hunting the bison by indigenous cultures and whites; the centrality of buffalo in Native American culture; and the near-total extermination of the bison in the late 1800s. Images and commentary unite to paint the story.