Custer’s Last Fight and Anheuser-Busch

 

In 1884 the artists Cassilly Adams completed a painting he named Custer’s Last Fight.  The painting was sold to John Ferber the owner of a saloon in St. Louis, Missouri, where the picture was prominently displayed.  The brewer Adolphus Busch acquired the painting and the saloon in 1892 when Ferber went broke.

Busch commissioned Otto F. Becker, to produce lithographs based on the painting to be used as advertising.  The first advertising prints appeared in 1896 with a run of fifteen thousand prints.  There have been eighteen subsequent editions with over one million copies having been produced. The original Adams painting was destroyed by fire on June 13, 1946.

 Custer’s Last Stand Re-examined