Jessica Crabtree

Charles Banks Wilson (born 1918) is an Oklahoma artist famed for his Native American portraits, historical commissions, and mural art. He started drawing at an early age and received training at the Chicago Art Institute, quickly finding work as an apprentice illustrator.

His most popular works are the official commissioned portraits of Oklahoma legends such as Will Rogers and Jim Thorpe, part of the collection of the Oklahoma Capitol. One of the first pieces to earn him wide acclaim was his 1941 lithograph Freedom’s Warrior, modeled after a Comanche code talker, and later re-created as an oil painting.

Wilson’s exhibit page at the University of Arkansas, Celebrating Native America, says:

Images such as “Cherokee Matriarch,” “Katie ‘Osage’ Cheyenne,” and “Osage Orator” reveal Native Americans caught in the transition between native and white America. Wilson says this transition “was not a popular theme in anyone’s opinion” because “Americans wanted the Indian to remain a nostalgic keepsake, committed forever to chasing the buffalo across the boundless prairies.”

Wilson admits he was a bit baffled when people asked him “why I was making social comments.” He says simply, “I was just painting what my eyes saw.”

“Search for the Purebloods”

His most ambitious project was a catalog of portrait drawings of pure-blooded Native Americans. The resulting odyssey spanned fifty years of work and portrayals of over a hundred individuals, many of whom were the last individuals of their nation to have non-mixed heritage.

Wilson’s close attention to accuracy and solid, intuitive technique – combined with his good nature – earned him a strong rapport with his subjects, who willingly modeled for his portraits. In return, he promised never to sell their likenesses and instead donated the finished original collection to the Gilcrease Museum. The published edition, Search for the Native American Purebloods, was released by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1983.

Wilson was the subject of a public television documentary released in 2006 interviewing the artist and highlighting his major career achievements. (Watch an excerpt here.)

He has exhibited his work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Museum, and received countless prestigious awards for his art, historical research, and educational & cultural contributions.

University of Arkansas: Charles Banks Wilson’s Celebrating Native America Exhibit

Charles Banks Wilson exhibit at the Will Rogers Museum