135 years ago today, Winold Reiss was born

F. Winold Reiss was a German-born American artist and graphic designer. He was born in Karlsruhe, Germany, the second son of Fritz Reiss and his wife. He grew up surrounded by art, as his father was a well-known landscape artist and his brother became a sculptor. Reiss became a portraitist. His philosophy was that an artist must travel to find the most interesting subjects; influenced by his father and his own curiosity, he drew subjects from many peoples and walks of life. In 1913 he immigrated to the United States, where he was able to follow his interest in Native Americans. In 1920 he went West for the first time, working for a lengthy period on the Blackfeet Reservation. Over the years Reiss painted more than 250 works depicting Native Americans. These paintings by Reiss became known more widely beginning in the 1920 and to the 1950s, when the Great Northern Railway commissioned Reiss to do paintings of the Blackfeet which were then distributed widely as lithographed reproductions on Great Northern calendars.