Elling William “Bill” Gollings lived a rambling life that began in a Gold Rush mining camp in the Idaho Territory in 1878. Gollings was sent to Michigan for an education and twice attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago, but he never forgot the draw of the American West. In 1909, after living the cowboy life in the Dakotas and beyond, and on his brother’s Montana ranch, he finally settled in Sheridan, Wyoming. His reputation as the state’s very own “Cowboy Artist” was sealed upon his death in 1932. (Not to be confused with the other “Cowboy Artist” from Montana, Charles M. Russell.)
E. William Gollings (1878-1932), Bad Actor AKA Hanging it to Him, 1915, oil on canvas, 29 x 20 in. Whitney Benefits Foundation.
Now, the Brinton Museum in Big Horn, Wyoming, is celebrating Gollings as part of its 2026 “Our Legends” exhibition series. William Gollings: Collected Treasures features roughly 40 paintings, watercolors, drawings and etchings by the artist, and is on view at the museum through December 21.
“Like his contemporaries Charles M. Russell, Edward Borein, Joe De Yong and others, Gollings had very little formal art training,” explains Jochen Wierich, curatorial director at the Brinton. “Like these artists that influenced him, Gollings made it his calling to paint the Old West. As a painter who made Sheridan, Wyoming, his home, Gollings became the foremost artist focusing on the history and culture of northeastern Wyoming and southwestern Montana. All his art is an extension of his experience of Western mountains and grasslands where Gollings lived the cowboy life and befriended Native Americans on the Northern Cheyenne and Crow reservations.”
William Gollings (1878-1932), Little Goose Landscape, 1911, oil on canvas. Anonymous loan.
Organized chronologically, the exhibition features some of Gollings’ earliest paintings from the region, including the watercolor Little Dry Creek, 1903, and the small-scale oil Little Goose Landscape, 1911. “The painting The Trail Boss may be one of his first major paintings after Gollings settled into a home and studio in Sheridan,” says Wierich. “It shows his confidence as a painter after studying at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art. It is a painting that channels his earlier experience as a cowboy and sets the stage for many of his classic portrayals of cowboys working on the range.”
William Gollings (1878-1932), Pulling Out of the Bog, 1914, oil on canvas, Loan from Mr. and Mrs. S. K. Johnston Jr.
One such work is Bad Actor AKA Hanging it to Him from 1915 which captures the high drama of bronco busting and which, according to Wierich, typifies the kind of oil painting that made Gollings famous. But Gollings also translated his cowboy experience into grisaille paintings like Pulling Out of the Bog, 1914, and applied it to Native American subjects, as in Travois in the Snow, also from 1914, that demonstrates his deft handling of winter light.
“Gollings’ great achievement was to make the people and landscape of the Wyoming/Montana border region a prominent part of Western art,” adds Wierich. “He was a quick learner, who took his inspiration from the great Western artists Frederic Remington, Charlie Russell and Joseph Henry Sharp, blending what he found into his own style of loose brushwork, color harmony, and bold composition.
William Gollings (1878-1932), Travois in the Snow, 1914, oil on canvas, 24 x 34 in. The Brinton Museum.
“This exhibition brings together a wide range of art made by Gollings that allows viewers to take a fresh look at his career,” he continues. “Behind Gollings’ pursuit of different themes in Western experience and his stylistic evolution, the artist followed a consistent idea of the American West and how he wanted it to be remembered.” —
William Gollings: Collected Treasures
Through December 21, 2026
The Brinton Museum
239 Brinton Road, Big Horn, WY 82833
(307) 672-3173
www.thebrintonmuseum.org
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