====== Paxson, Edgar Samuel ====== 
 (25 April 1852-9 Nov. 1919), artist. (E. S. Paxson, Edgar S. Paxson) Born at East Hamburg, N. Y., near Buffalo. From his mid-20s, he made the American West his home. After a period at Deer Lodge, Mont., he was, from 1881 to 1906, a resident of Butte, Mont., the celebrated mining town. In his paintings , he depicts life in the West, principally Montana, with much attention to the Indians. It has been both claimed and denied that Paxson served on the government side in the Nez Percé War of 1877. However, he did have a long involvement with the American military and he did serve, though somewhat old to be a soldier, in the Philippines sector of the Spanish-American war. He died at Missoula, Mont., where he had been resident since 1906. He was married to Laura Milicent Johnson in 1874. (there were children) Paxson’s best remembered painting is the huge depiction of “Custer’s Last Stand,” on which he worked for many years, and which has often been reproduced in whole or in part. It is now in the art collection of the large and sumptuously outfitted Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming.

<tab>Paxson did three black-and-white illustrations, each of page size, published in the form of reproduced paintings, not line drawings, in //Glengarry School Days// (1902), the widely read novel by Ralph Connor (C. W. Gordon) For many readers far from GC, these offered an impression of how Glengarrians looked. Though the illustrations are good as art works, and interpret the novel effectively, the physical types in them are hardly recognizable as Glengarrians. The Indians of his paintings sometimes–though not always– look somewhat like this, so it seems he was to some degree painting the Glengarrians as Montana Indians. The schoolmaster in the illustrations looks sufficiently like Sir John A. Macdonald to make one wonder if Paxson had some recollection of him in mind. With regard to the rather dark complexions the Glengarrians seem to have in these, admittedly, rather dark prints, it may be worth noting that Goldwin Smith in his //Reminiscences// (1910 p. 431) speaks (in connection, indeed, with Sir John A.) of the “dark Highland face.” But given that Paxson did the illustrations at a time when a great many Glengarrians were living in Butte (see Dr Hugh J. Mcdonald), it is an interesting question whether, among other things, he was simply depicting someone he knew who was a Glengarrian, though not, physically, very typical of that group. There is a handsome, well-illustrated, coffee-table book, //E. S. Paxson: Frontier Artist//, by William Edgar Paxson, Jr (1984); it mentions the Connor illustrations (pp. 56, 95, 105, 106) but does not reproduce them.


----
<fs small>//Who Was Who in America//, Vol. I: 1897-1942 p. 945 * //E. S. Paxson// (1984) as cited (portraits, bibliography) * Don Russell, //Custer’s Last or, The Battle of the Little Big Horn// (1968) (title sic) *articles (with portraits) on Paxson by K. R. Toole & Michael Kennedy in //Montana Magazine of History// (Spring 1954), William Edgar Paxson in //True West// (Sept.-Oct. 1963), F. R. Stenzel in //Montana: the Magazine of Western History// (Sept. 1963)
</fs>
[<6>]