Howard Terpning
Howard Terpning (born November 5, 1927) is an American painter and illustrator best known for paintings of Native Americans.
He was born in Oak Park, Illinois, and grew up in the Midwest. He loved drawing from a young age and decided he wanted to be an artist by age seven. A summer near Durango, Colorado, sparked his interest in the American West and its Indigenous people. He joined the Marine Corps in 1945 and served in China until 1946.
After the Marines, Terpning studied art in Chicago, using the GI Bill. He attended the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and the American Academy of Art. A family friend helped him start working with Haddon Sundblom in Sundblom’s Chicago studio. He began as an apprentice, doing errands, and soon took on his own commissions. He moved to Milwaukee, then New York, and by 1962 he worked as a freelance artist from home.
For about 25 years he painted magazine covers, illustrations, and advertising for major magazines such as Time, Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, Good Housekeeping, and Redbook. He also created more than 80 movie posters, including The Guns of Navarone, Cleopatra, Doctor Zhivago, The Sound of Music, and Gone with the Wind (1967 re-release).
In 1967 Terpning went to Vietnam as a civilian combat artist to document the war with the Marines. He returned with six paintings that are now at the National Museum of the Marine Corps. Around 1974 he shifted from commercial art to the American West. He moved to Arizona to devote himself to Western painting and began selling his work in Western galleries.
He was elected to the National Academy of Western Art and to the Cowboy Artists of America. During 22 years with the Cowboy Artists of America, he won 42 awards. In 1985 the Gilcrease Museum gave him a retrospective with 38 works. His paintings have also been shown in Beijing and Paris.
Terpning’s style is realist and highly representational, but focused on narrative rather than delicate detail. His palette is usually restrained to emphasize the story in the painting.
In 2006 his works sold for impressive sums at auction, with Search for the Renegades selling for over $1.4 million and The Stragglers for just over $1 million. He was featured on CBS Sunday Morning in 2008. Today his art is in several museums, including the Phoenix Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Autry National Center, the Gilcrease Museum, the Eiteljorg Museum, and the Booth Western Art Museum.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 23:47 (CET).