End of the Trail by James Earl Fraser in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Feb. 2020

End of the Trail
1918, cast 1918

James Earle Fraser American


Object Details

Title: End of the Trail

Artist: James Earle Fraser (American, Winona, Minnesota 1876–1953 Westport, Connecticut)

Date: 1918, cast 1918

Culture: American

Medium: Bronze

Dimensions: 33 x 26 x 8 3/4 in. (83.8 x 66 x 22.2 cm)

Credit Line: Purchase, Friends of the American Wing Fund, Mr. and Mrs. S. Parker Gilbert Gift, Morris K. Jesup and 2004 Benefit Funds, 2010

Accession Number: 2010.73


Drawn from Fraser’s experiences growing up in Dakota Territory in the 1880s, this exhausted Native American seated on a windblown pony is an evocative comment on the damaging effects of advancing Euro-American settlement on the Indigenous population. “End of the Trail” exemplifies the western subjects created by such French-trained artists such as Fraser, who were expressing themselves at once as American, through their choice of themes, and as modern, through their command of current aesthetics.

Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/20461