Nearly four decades after its creation, Andy Warhol's final major print suite is returning to the auction block as a complete set. On 22 October, Heritage Auctions is offering all ten screenprints of Cowboys and Indians (1986) together with their original box, a rare chance to acquire the portfolio whole. At the time of writing, bidding on the group had already reached $500,000.

The suite shows Warhol turning his Pop lens on the myths of the American West. Three-foot-square sheets pair Hollywood and history: John Wayne's gunfighter sits alongside Geronimo, Annie Oakley, General George Custer and Theodore Roosevelt, while Mother and Child, Northwest Coast Mask and Kachina Dolls widen the view beyond famous faces. In Indian Head Nickel, an everyday coin becomes a monumental Pop image. The John Wayne sheet carries a special distinction — it is inscribed "Unique," with hand-applied touches including a pink-to-blue gradient across the gun and a red stripe on the bandana tie that set it apart from the standard edition.

The portfolio capped a lifelong fascination. Warhol watched Westerns as a child in the 1930s, directed Horse in 1965 and co-directed Lonesome Cowboys in 1968, bought property in Colorado, collected cowboy boots and Native American artefacts, and befriended Navajo painter R.C. Gorman and Georgia O'Keeffe in New Mexico. In 1963 he even pictured Elvis as a cowboy, gun drawn — one of his first professional successes. Scholars have since debated whether the Pittsburgh-born artist, who died in 1987 a year after the suite, deserves to be called a Western artist at all.

For collectors, the draw is completeness. Full sets of Cowboys and Indians with the original box seldom surface, and a "Unique"-inscribed John Wayne adds a one-off flourish to the most recognisable image in the group.