Born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Gund was captivated by the American West as a youngster learning to ride horseback in Seattle, Washington, where his family had moved when he was a young child. The Gund family eventually returned to the Midwest, settling in Cleveland, but for the rest of his life Gund’s heart remained firmly in the West.

Although his family and business responsibilities kept him in Cleveland, Gund bought a ranch in Nevada and spent several months each year in the West. With each trip, it became more apparent to him that the Old West was rapidly disappearing in the face of escalating immigration, industrialization, and modernization. In 1929, he began collecting images of horses and horsemanship. As his sophistication and knowledge of Western art grew, he added early nineteenth-century Native American portraits and mid-century landscape paintings, as well as works created in the post-Wild West era.