About this artwork
The End of the Trail, James Earle Fraser’s best-known sculpture, has come to symbolize the genocide of Native American peoples amid relentless westward expansion. In 1894, the year after the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the 17-year-old Fraser, then a student at the School of the Art Institute, produced the first version of this bronze sculpture. (The Art Institute’s sculpture is a later model and cast.) Reenforcing the conception of the so-called vanishing Indian, the work portrays an exhausted Sioux drooping over his equally weary pony; both rider and horse have reached the end of the trail.
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Status
- Currently Off View
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Department
- Arts of the Americas
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Artist
- James Earle Fraser
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Title
- The End of the Trail
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Place
- United States (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- 1918
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Medium
- Bronze
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Inscriptions
- Signed and inscribed recto, right, on base, cast: "© FRASER 1918". Inscribed verso, left, on base, cast: "G [figure of a shewolf] C / GORHAM CO. FOUNDERS".
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Dimensions
- H.: 111.8 cm (44 in.)
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Credit Line
- Bequest of Arthur Rubloff Trust
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Reference Number
- 1991.325
Extended information about this artwork
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