Home |  PublicationsEncyclopedia |  Tiger, Jerome Richard

The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

Jerome Tiger
(2012.201.B1287.0683, Oklahoma Publishing Company Photography Collection, OHS).

TIGER, JEROME RICHARD (1941–1967).

A Creek-Seminole painter born at Tahlequah on July 8, 1941, Jerome Tiger grew up near Eufaula, Oklahoma, and attended public schools in Eufaula and Muskogee. He dropped out of high school at sixteen and joined the U.S. Navy, serving in the Naval Reserve from 1958 to 1960. Finding employment as a laborer and sometime prizefighter, he continued to draw and paint in his spare time. He briefly attended the Cleveland Engineering Institute in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1963 to 1964. For the most part, however, he found formal schooling restrictive and frustrating.

Encouraged by a friend, Nettie Wheeler of Muskogee, Tiger submitted several paintings in 1962 to the American Indian Artists Annual at Philbrook Art Museum in Tulsa. Recognition of his talent was immediate. Over the next five years he produced a large body of work that brought critical acclaim and a number of honors, including the All American Indian Days Grand Award in Sheridan, Wyoming, in 1965 and first prize in the National Exhibition of American Indian Art held in Oakland, California, the following year. Also in 1966 Tiger mounted a solo exhibition at Philbrook, a show that proved to be a sell-out with the public. Curator Jeanne Snodgrass asked the artist to replace items that had been sold on opening night. He is said to have replaced many of them twice before the show closed.

Tiger was twenty-six years old when on August 13, 1967, he died as the result of an accident with a handgun. He was survived by his wife Peggy Richmond Tiger and three children, one of whom, Jerome Christopher Tiger, became an artist and at age twenty-three also died in a shooting accident. An older brother, Johnny Tiger, Jr., followed a career in the arts as a commercial artist, painter, and award-winning sculptor. A cousin, Jon Tiger, also distinguished himself as graphic artist and painter.

Much of Jerome Tiger's work was sold as quickly as he produced it and remains in private hands. Publicly he is represented in the collections of the Philbrook and Gilcrease museums in Tulsa, the Five Civilized Tribes Museum in Muskogee, Woolaroc Museum near Bartlesville, the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe, and the Museum of the American Indian and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior, in Washington, D.C.

David C. Hunt

Learn More

Peggy Tiger, "Remembering an Exceptional Team: Jerome Tiger and Nettie Wheeler," The Chronicles of Oklahoma 83 (Fall 2005).

Peggy Tiger and Molly Babcock, The Life and Art of Jerome Tiger (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980).

Patrick D. Lester, The Biographical Directory of Native American Painters (Tulsa, Okla.: SIR Publications, 1995).

Citation

The following (as per The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition) is the preferred citation for articles:
David C. Hunt, “Tiger, Jerome Richard,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry?entry=TI001.

Published January 15, 2010

Copyright and Terms of Use

No part of this site may be construed as in the public domain.

Copyright to all articles and other content in the online and print versions of The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History is held by the Oklahoma Historical Society (OHS). This includes individual articles (copyright to OHS by author assignment) and corporately (as a complete body of work), including web design, graphics, searching functions, and listing/browsing methods. Copyright to all of these materials is protected under United States and International law.

Users agree not to download, copy, modify, sell, lease, rent, reprint, or otherwise distribute these materials, or to link to these materials on another web site, without authorization of the Oklahoma Historical Society. Individual users must determine if their use of the Materials falls under United States copyright law's "Fair Use" guidelines and does not infringe on the proprietary rights of the Oklahoma Historical Society as the legal copyright holder of The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and part or in whole.