Dan Flores

Borrowing his love of pure chromatic colors and a fascination with exotic people from modern art, Rice translated those into a completely fresh take on the Blackfeet of the West.

The paintings then became commercial work in the form of the Great Northern Railroad's calendars and menus.

He just loved people, Rice's daughter-in-law told me.

He loved the way people looked.

But as Rice's son, Jark, always said, the real reason Rice came to America was always to paint the Indians.

Over a few weeks on that first visit to the Blackfeet, Rice churned out a remarkable 36 portraits.

Exhibited back east, the entire cache quickly sold.

Already one of the most celebrated modernist portrait painters in New York, Rice had finally painted Indians.

But he was still living in New York, and what he really wanted was to be George Catlin Redux, a 20th century biographer of Indians who everyone in New York believed at the time were vanishing.

As with Curtis, sometimes life requires a lucky break.

In early 1927, Rice's sculptor brother, Hans, was guiding climbers in Glacier Park when he happened to meet Louis Hill of the Great Northern.

When he showed Hill a portfolio of his brother's portraits, Hill did not hesitate.

Could Vino come out that summer at the invitation of the Great Northern, which would fund his trip and lodging in return for rights of first refusal on whatever art resulted?

Being old was past ready.

He'd remarked to friends in the East the previous year, how beautiful the West is you people in New York don't realize.

I've lived in New York, but now I can't stand it any longer.

I feel I must break away, get among the Indians again, live with them in their simple way and study and paint them.

The relationship that now formed between an artist, a railroad, a national park, and several score Western Indians lasted for the next quarter century.

It had something for everybody.

The painter got to fulfill a lifelong ambition and leave an enduring legacy.