Rudolph Friedrich Kurz (1818–1871) was a Swiss painter and writer who traveled to the United States in order to paint and study the Native Americans.

He traveled in the west, along the upper Mississippi and Missouri rivers, describing the peoples and regions in his journals.

But he was told that the local Mandan and Hidatsa people believed that painting and drawing would bring ill luck.

The Bourgeois, or manager of the fort, Edwin Thompson Denig, commissioned the young Swiss man to paint and sketch various persons and places.

Upon his death on October 16, 1871, Rudolf Friedrich Kurz left numerous sketches, paintings (some of which were burned by his family due to nudity) and texts.