JEROME TIGER

- JEROME TIGER -

Muscogee Creek-Seminole, 1941-1967

Jerome Tiger was one of the most significant Native American painters of the twentieth century, despite a career that spanned only five years. Born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and raised near Eufaula and Muskogee, Tiger grew up immersed in Muscogee traditions and histories. Largely self-taught, he began drawing as a child and worked various jobs, including serving in the U.S. Navy, before turning seriously to painting in the early 1960s. His breakthrough came in 1962 when his work was accepted into the American Indian Artists Annual at the Philbrook Art Museum. He subsequently developed a distinctive style characterized by expressive figures, strong draftsmanship, and sensitive portrayals of Native people, families, dancers, horses, and everyday community life.

Tiger's work combined traditional Native subjects with a modern, highly personal visual language. Rather than creating idealized or ethnographic representations, he depicted Native life from within his own experience, imbuing his subjects with intimacy and emotional depth. The Philbrook presented a solo exhibition of his work that same year, establishing him as a major emerging Native artist. Tiger died accidentally in 1967 at only twenty-six, leaving behind a remarkably substantial body of paintings and drawings whose influence has continued across generations of Native artists.

Tiger's work is held in numerous major institutional collections, including the Philbrook Museum of Art, Gilcrease Museum, Five Civilized Tribes Museum, Woolaroc Museum, Museum of New Mexico, Heard Museum, Oklahoma State University Museum of Art, and the National Museum of the American Indian. His work has been featured in exhibitions including Drawn from Memory: James T. Bialac Collection of Native American Art at the Heard Museum, Life and Legacy: The Art of Jerome Tiger at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, and Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting at the National Museum of the American Indian. The Five Civilized Tribes Museum has also presented exhibitions devoted specifically to Tiger, including Life and Art of Jerome Tiger and Father to Son, the Art of Jerome Tiger and Christopher Tiger.