When W. Herbert "Buck" Dunton moved from New York to Taos, New Mexico, in 1914, he was one of the best-known Western illustrators in the United States. His paintings of the American West had graced the pages of periodicals such as Harper's Monthly, Popular Magazine, and Scribner's Magazine as well as books by Harold Bindloss, Zane Grey, and Alfred Henry Lewis. In fact, his reputation as an illustrator and his knowledge of the West prompted the view of Dunton as the successor to Frederic Remington.

Born on 28 August 1878 in Augusta, Maine, William Herbert Dunton was the first son of William Henry Dunton and Anna Katherine Pillsbury Dunton. The elder Dunton was an amateur actor and a photographer who worked for the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, but little is known of the mother's occupation. Dunton grew up on a trotting-horse farm owned by his maternal grandfather, John Currier Pillsbury, and...