The new exhibition The Cinematic West explores the captivating connection between the works of seminal Western artists like Remington and Russell and early Hollywood films.
A painting of a poker game gone wrong suddenly springs to life: A gunman rushes into the saloon, the barkeep leaps over the bar, and three clobbered card players scrape themselves off the floor. Frederic Remington’s painting A Misdeal leaps from the canvas to the silver screen in John Ford’s silent film Hell Bent — and Western storytelling’s exciting evolution reveals itself at a new exhibition at the Sid Richardson Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.
Stagecoach movie poster. Lithograph, 1939. Poster collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 70006722.
The Cinematic West: The Art That Made the Movies explores how artists like Remington and Charles M. Russell shaped the enduring imagery and narratives of Western film. From early silent movies to current hits like Yellowstone, cinematic visuals can often trace their lineages to the landscapes and lore first expressed so eloquently in paint.
“The Sid Richardson collection is so rich in imagery that parallels the look and feel of Western movies and television,” says museum director Scott Winterrowd, who curated the exhibition and is an artist himself. “It was a natural fit to pair the paintings with movie clips and posters that conjure up connections to a broad array of Western cinema.”
Movie Night at Taos Theater, Oscar Berninghaus (1874–1952). Oil on canvas, 1939. Private collection.
Enhanced by pieces loaned from the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, and other private collections, the exhibition opens with a nod to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show then dives into the artistic visions of Remington and Russell through paintings, sculptures, and illustrations displayed alongside silent-film clips, vintage movie posters, and other ephemera. Dynamic color contrasts and dramatic images draw the viewer into an imagined world that’s sometimes showered in the West’s golden sunshine, sometimes shrouded in its mysteries of night.
Cowboys & Indians sat down with Scott Winterrowd to discuss the new show and Western art’s continuing impact on contemporary film and television.
Cowboys & Indians: What inspired you to host this exhibition at the Sid Richardson Museum?
SCOTT WINTERROWD: Central to the exhibit’s development was the history of the Remington painting A Misdeal and its life in Hollywood over most of the 20th cen- representation of an entire movie, and they still play the same role today that they al- ways have.
C&I: Quick detour about movie posters. The famous poster for Stagecoach starring a young John Wayne is a nighttime action scene that’s practically burned into the American consciousness. What do we know about that particular artwork?
WINTERROWD: The posters made in those days were by a variety of artists employed by the different studios. Stagecoach was a United Artists release. The posters were leased while the film was being shown and were then expected to be returned to United Artists. This particular poster is very rare and is on loan to us from the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, it seems that many of the artists who made these posters are unknown today. [Movie poster art] certainly is an art form, and although not named, they are very talented artists. The process to create these posters is lithography, which of course was used by fine artists as well as in creating mass-produced images from posters to really all kinds of printed images on all manner of products.
C&I: How does Charles M. Russell fit in?
WINTERROWD: While there are no direct references to Russell’s work in films, he knew many of the famous actors and performers who made the transition from vaudeville to Hollywood, and when he and his wife, Nancy, began wintering in Southern California in 1920, they fell into the or- bit of many of the most famous stars of that time, including Douglas Fairbanks, Harry Carey, William S. Hart, and Will Rogers. In 1924, John Ford requested to meet Russell through their mutual friend Harry Carey. Even after Russell’s passing in 1926, his legacy in Hollywood lived on through his only protégé, Joe De Yong, who would work as a Western consultant for directors including Cecil B. DeMille and George Stevens.
The Hold Up, William Robinson Leigh (1866–1955). Oil on canvas, 1903. Sid Richardson Museum, 1944.5.1.83.
C&I: Director John Ford mused, “The real star of my westerns is the land. A western is all about the land.” Did images of Western landscapes make us love Western movies, or did Western movies make us love the imagery?
WINTERROWD: Well, our national parks were established after the painter Thomas Moran captured the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone on canvas, so I would give it to the artist for capturing the landscape and our admiration of the Western landscape. One of the points I try to make in the exhibit is that John Ford utilized the landscape of Monument Valley — which has become so identified with Western cinema — in much the same way Charlie Russell utilized specific landscape features from various locations in the region around [his hometown of] Great Falls, Montana.
C&I: How do contemporary shows like Yellowstone and The Revenant continue the classic Western storytelling of early silent films and Western art?
WINTERROWD: They are all essentially just stories until you add in the Western landscape, and that connects us to this larger idea of American culture and identity. I love that contemporary shows like 1883 and Landman are filmed here in Fort Worth. The exhibit comes full circle when you realize that Douglas Fairbanks performed here in downtown in 1900, and now we have brought him back in our show, while Landman is being filmed just blocks away on 7th Street.
C&I: What do you want people to take away from the exhibition?
WINTERROWD: We really hope that the links we’ve made in this exhibit connect [the art] with your own personal experience of Western cinema, from the classic films of the 20th century to the popular contemporary westerns that are still being filmed today.
The Cinematic West is on view through April 2026 at the Sid Richardson Museum in historic Sundance Square in Fort Worth, Texas.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy of the Sid Richardson Museum.
HEADER: A Misdeal, Frederic Remington (1861–1909). Oil on canvas, ca. 1897. Private collection.
From the August/September 2025 issue.
