James Earle Fraser

(1876-1953)

The End of the Trail 33 1/4 in. (84.5 cm.) high

Footnotes

Provenance
Private collection.
Estate of the above.
Private collection, Massachusetts, acquired from the above, 1950's.
Private collection, Massachusetts, by descent from the above.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, circa 2015.

Literature
L.H. Dodd, The Golden Age of American Sculpture, Boston, 1936, p. 102, another example illustrated.
W. Craven, Sculpture in America, New York, 1968, pp. 493, 511, fig. 13.18, another example illustrated.
Kennedy Galleries, Inc., James Earle Fraser: American Sculptor, A Retrospective Exhibition of Bronzes from Works of 1913 to 1953, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1969, pp. 3, 5, 7-10, 14, 16-17, 26, 34, 50, 59, nos. 4-5, other examples illustrated.
D. Krakel, End of the Trail: The Odyssey of a Statue, Norman, Oklahoma, 1973, another example illustrated on the front cover. (as End of the Trail)
P.J. Broder, Bronzes of the American West, New York, 1974, pp. 178-87, 190, 379, nos. 178-185, 489, other examples illustrated.
A.L. Freundlich, The Sculpture of James Earle Fraser, Boca Raton, Florida, 2001, pp. 1, 6-7, 165-67, another example illustrated.
Denver Art Museum, Shaping the West: American Sculptors of the 19th Century, Denver, 2010, pp. 10-11, another example illustrated.
T. Tolles, T.B. Smith, C. Clark, B.W. Dippie, P.H. Hassrick, K. Lemmey, J. Murphy, The American West in Bronze, 1850-1925, New York, 2013, pp. 11, 25, 49-51, 154, 189, no. 61, fig. 13, other examples illustrated. (as End of the Trail)

Another example of this version can be found in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (object no. 2010.73).

According to the Roman Bronze Work Foundry Files at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, this example was cast on June 29th, 1918.

For a significant period of early modern art history the bronze medium was limited to academic copies of athletic Greek gods in contorted stances, but Western Art revitalized this medium as an independent and worthy art form. Much like the Greeks immortalized the Gods of Olympus, Western sculptors preserved the myth of the Frontier. Chief among these celebrated images of the Old West are Frederic Remington's The Bronco Buster, Cyrus Dallin's Appeal to the Great Spirit, countless Charles Marion Russell works, and the present lot - James Earle Fraser's End of the Trail.

Fraser first developed this now iconic image of a weary Native American warrior dramatically slumped over his equally fatigued horse in 1894 at just seventeen years old. He was inspired by his experiences as a boy growing up in the Dakota Territory and from the exhibitions he had seen at the World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago the year prior. This early version launched his career when he won $1,000 from the American Art Association. In later reworkings, the feeling of exhaustion is only amplified by the addition of a spear which slowly slips out of the rider's arm creating a strong downward diagonal line that echoes the sunken heads of both figures. The image continued to gain widespread popularity when a monumental plaster version won a gold medal while on view at the 1915 Panama Pacific Exhibition in San Francisco. Soon thereafter Fraser made two bronze editions in reduced size – a 44 in. cast at the Gorham Foundry and together with the present version, a 33 in. cast at Roman Bronze Works.

End of the Trail has resonated with many for both its geographical and cultural signaling of the end of the Frontier Era.¹ For early settlers, a geographical notion of the American West meant exploration of anything that was part of the New World. As expansion continued however, the end of the trail meant Indian nations being increasingly confined to government reservations. When commenting on the work Fraser noted that "I realized that they were always being sent farther West, and I often heard my father say that the Indians would someday be pushed into the Pacific Ocean."² This embodiment of the vanishing West is best conveyed in bronze and appreciated in the round, with every angle from the horse's windblown tail to the rider's limp ankles depicting heartbreak and defeat.

Today the Pan-Pacific plaster model remains a fixture of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, with examples of the smaller bronze versions in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago (1991.325) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2010.73). Despite reaching the End of the Trail, this lifetime cast has remained a resilient image that ultimately eclipses the myth of the Old West to firmly ground the hardships of our Indian Nations in reality.

¹P.J. Broder, Bronzes of the American West, New York, 1974, p. 18.
²Quoted in M. Bush, James Earle Fraser, American Sculptor: A Retrospective Exhibition of Bronzes from Works of 1913–1953, New York, 1969, p 7.