Provenance: Private collection, North Carolina The prominent figure and horse that are featured in Winter Twilight must have been ideal subjects for Kenneth Riley, who painted them twice in nearly identical compositions—once here in Winter Twilight and again in 1997’s Winter Solstice, a larger work but with slightly less detail. Both pieces are nearly identical, but Winter Twilight has several nuances that aren’t in the larger version, including several small additions on the buffalo robe, more prominent quillwork on the figure’s leggings and distinct wagon tracks that lead back to the village. Other unique qualities to this version are the lodge openings in the painting’s background. Of key interest is the blowing flap of the central lodge, which reinforces the cold setting. In A Poetic Spirit: The Enduring Art of Kenneth Riley, author Susan Hallsten McGarry identifies the figure as a Mandan warrior and invokes the words of George Catlin, who documented Mandan villages in his treks west. The Mandan people were nearly wiped out by smallpox after 1837, a part of their history Riley was moved by. Although he focused on the years prior to the smallpox epidemic, the artist sympathized with their resentment of white people during those pivotal years in the 1830s. Riley returned to the Mandan people as subjects throughout his career.