ROBERT OTTOKAR LINDNEUX (AMERICAN 1871 – 1970)

Robert Lindneux began his art training early--at the age of nine. At 16 he traveled to Europe and where he received instruction from French artist Vautier at the National Academy in Dusseldorf. He studied with Franz Stuck at the Academy in Munich and with Hungarian artist Munkacsy at Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. While in Paris he saw Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, and after having admired a full-length portrait of Buffalo Bill by eccentric French artist Rosa Bonheur, was inspired to travel to the American West. In 1894 Lindneux traveled Colorado where he established Denver as his home base as he travelled extensively throughout Wyoming, South Dakota, and Montana. In order to fund his travels, he sometimes accepted work as a horse wrangler, cowboy, and trapper. He resided with several of the western Indian tribes—Cheyenne, Crow, and Oglala Sioux, the latter of which made him an honorary chief.

At the beginning of the 20th century, he shared a studio In Great Falls, Montana with Charles Russell, the well-known frontier genre painter. He later opened his own studio in Denver, where painted western scenes and portraits of Indians. He became friends with Buffalo Bill and painted many pictures of him, one of which resides in the museum at Buffalo Bill’s gravesite on top of Lookout Mountain in Colorado. Lindneux led an interesting and colorful life, and his reputation as the “Historian of the West” is deserved. He was a charter member of the American Pioneer Trail Association, the Colorado State Historical Society, the Buffalo Bill Memorial Museum Association, and the Royal Society of Artists in London.