A First Look at Sid Richardson Museum’s Newest Exhibit in Fort Worth — Showcasing How American Western Art Influenced Cinema

American artists Charles Russell and Frederic Remington are widely known for their paintings and sculptures that depicted the wild American West of the late 19th century. Bison hunting, Native American encounters, and frontier exploration are all themes throughout their works, which inspired Hollywood’s Western films of the time. In Fort Worth, Sid Richardson Museum’s new exhibition, The Cinematic West: The Art That Made The Movies, focuses on this art that influenced silent films and the Golden Age of Westerns. It opens on Saturday, May 3.

The Cinematic West looks at the connection between Remington’s and Russell’s depictions of the American West and the birth of Western films in Hollywood. Guests can explore how these painted and sculpted landscapes and characters inspired early Western films and see how filmmakers took these stories on canvas and created cinematic treasures. Between paintings, sculptures, and illustrations alongside clips of silent Westerns and vintage movie posters, visitors can see how these stories were translated from paintbrush to screen.

“Both painters and filmmakers sought to capture the spirit of adventure, the vastness of the open vistas, and the promise of new opportunities that defined the American West,” says museum director Scott Winterrowd. “This exhibition reveals how these artistic visions intertwined to create a powerful and lasting mythology that continues to resonate with audiences today, from the silent era to contemporary hits like Yellowstone.”

A focus of the exhibition is Frederic Remington’s 1897 painting, “A Misdeal,” which depicts a tense gambling scene. Its appearance in films such as Hell Bent (1918) demonstrates its influence on cinema, even inspiring the look of films such as Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). The silent film Wild and Woolly (1917) is also part of the show, which features scenes crafted after “A Misdeal” and Remington’s painting “His First Lesson,” which hangs at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. The exhibition also highlights the impact of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West shows on early Western narratives, and a clip from Cody’s 1913 silent film The Indian Wars is played.

Also on view is a small section dedicated to the time Russell spent in California in the early 1920s, featuring his depictions of American actor and filmmaker Douglas Fairbanks in a letter and a bronze. There’s also his bronze sculpture of his friend and cowboy philosopher, Will Rogers. Charles Russell and his wife, Nancy, wintered in the Los Angeles area from 1920 to 1926 and befriended many Hollywood stars, which resulted in a fusion of artistic ideas between cinema and paintings.

Taos, New Mexico-based artist Oscar Berninghaus, who was known for his paintings of Native Americans and the American Southwest, also has a small part of the exhibition. His painting “Movie Night, Taos Theater” (1939) is paired with the movie poster for John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) and the Sid Richardson Museum’s painting, “A Taint on the Wind” (1909).

The museum will have multiple opportunities for visitors to dig deeper into the material, including a film series on John Ford, lectures, book discussions, and gallery talks. The Cinematic West runs from May 3, 2025, through April 2026. Admission is always free.