Robert Lindneux painted the “Trail of Tears” at the request of Frank Phillips who built the Woolaroc Museum in Bartlesville Oklahoma. In the April 1976 issue of the magazine “Southwest Art” on page 46, writer Scott Dial who interviewed Lindneux’s daughter, lists the seven steps that Lindneux always followed when creating a historical painting, they were: 1) Research 2) Compilation 3) In the field sketches 4) Charcoal composition 5) Pencil drawings 6) Oil skin transfer 7) Work on the oil on canvas painting. Lindneux used only ten pigments to create all of the shades and hues in his paintings. Colorado History archive houses much of Lindneux’s personal items including one of his paint palates and paint boxes. The colors observed in the paint boxes are…. These exact colors likely changed over time based on availability. These were all technics that Lindneux learned in his training at the Art Academy in Dusseldorf, Germany, the Ecole in Paris and Munich Art Academy.
Lindneux did extensive research for this painting to make it as historically accurate as possible. Some of this research was done at the Woolaroc Museum itself where Lindneux took notes about and made sketches of material at Woolaroc related to the Cherokees, Osages and Seminoles. Letters from Lindneux to Mr. John N. Seward, who was a manager for Mr. Phillip, also describe the research he did. Lindneux gathered information from the Museum of Natural History in New York City, the Heye Foundation Indian Museum also in New York City, the Field Museum in Chicago, the Studebaker Museum in south Bend, Indiana, (for examples of the Studebaker wagons in the painting.) The soldiers in the painting are from copies of military plates made by R. A. Ogden, who Lindneux states was an authority on uniforms of the United States Army. Lindneux also states that the dog pack is authentic according to George Catlin and Edward S. Curtis’ “Indian Days of Long Ago”. Lindneux also says in one of these letters that, “I feel the best account of the “Trail of Tears” is recorded by James Mooney in the “Myths of the Cherokee” page 132 of the 19th Report 1897-98, of the Bureau of American Ethnology.”
The first of these letters to Mr. Seward was dated, August 2, 1941. In a letter dated November 15, 1941 Lindneux thanks Mr. Seward for some of his suggestions including having the caravan coming through a gap in the hills in the background. This indicates that Mr. Seward also had input into how this painting was executed. In another letter dated January 30, 1942, Lindneux encloses a photo of his initial drawing of the painting for Mr. Seward to review and approve before he began work on the actual oil painting.
Lindneux’s memoir indicates that he cut back his teaching schedule *\find the from part of this information\* to four days a week so that he could dedicate more time to working on this painting. In a letter to Frank Phillips on April 20, 1942 Lindneux declares that after an “untiring” amount of research the “Trail of Tears” painting was finally done and that he felt it was an artistic and truthful rendition of this event. Lindneux spent around six months doing research for this painting and three months painting it.