Howard Terpning (His mother was an interior decorator and his father worked for the railroad)

Howard Terpning (born 1927), often celebrated as the “Storyteller of the Native American,” is a highly lauded American painter and illustrator. He is renowned for his historical accuracy, profound empathy, and technical mastery in depicting the 19th-century American West and the Plains Indian tribes.

Born in Illinois, Terpning knew he wanted to be an artist by the age of seven. At 17, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and served in China. After World War II, he used the G.I. Bill to attend the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the American Academy of Art. He began his professional career as an apprentice in the Chicago studio of Haddon Sundblom (famous for his Coca-Cola Santa Claus illustrations).

For 25 years, Terpning was a wildly successful commercial illustrator. He created magazine covers and story illustrations for Time, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, and Good Housekeeping. More notably, he illustrated over 80 iconic movie posters, including the artwork for cinematic classics like The Sound of Music, Doctor Zhivago, The Guns of Navarone, Lawrence of Arabia, and the 1967 re-release of Gone with the Wind.

In 1967, his life took a pivotal turn when the Marine Corps invited him to Vietnam as a civilian combat artist. He went on patrols with combat troops in Da Nang, capturing the harrowing reality of war in his sketches and paintings. This profoundly changed him, developing his deep empathy for the human condition and the suffering of marginalized peoples—a sentiment that would later fuel his fine art.

Growing tired of commercial illustration in the mid-1970s, Terpning moved to Arizona to dedicate himself entirely to painting the American West. He immersed himself in the study of Native American culture, artifacts, and history. His realistic, deeply respectful, and emotionally resonant paintings quickly made him a giant in the Western art world. By 1979, he was elected to the Cowboy Artists of America (CAA) and the National Academy of Western Art. Today, he is considered a living master, and his original oils are among the most sought-after and highly valued works of contemporary Western art.

Active in others filds : Commercial Illustration, Movie Poster Design, Combat Art (Civilian artist for the US Marine Corps).