Indians |
From the beginning, art of the American West has centered around Indians. The presence of Native Americans in the West drew the earliest artists into its magnificent forests, plains, mountains, and deserts.
Through the centuries of American experience in the West, American Indians have been the subjects of white perceptions of the West. At the same time, Native American artists have produced a rich and splendid variety of works that reflect their own views of Indians, their cultures, and their land.
Native American artists and indeed all Indians are reclaiming their lives in a West that reflects our widely diverse American culture. |
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Walter Ufer
Along the Rio Grande
1920
Oil on canvas, 24 1/2" x 24 1/2"
I paint the Indian as he is. In the garden digging -- In the field working -- Riding amongst the sage -- Meeting his woman in the desert -- Angling for trout -- In meditation.
-- Walter Ufer, 1928.
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Frank Earle Schoonover
Ojibway Indian Spearing the Maskenozha (Pike)
1923
Oil on canvas, 40 1/8" x 30 1/8"
Schoonover studied with the famous illustrator, Howard Pyle, in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. After a career illustrating books and magazine articles, as well as his own stories, Schoonover began to work as an easel painter. Many of his thousands of paintings feature lone figures involved in a challenge or struggle.
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Seth Eastman
The Tanner
1848
Oil on canvas, 30 1/2" x 25 1/4
Seth Eastman was a native of Brunswick, Maine, and a graduate of West Point. He traveled west to serve with the U.S. Army at Fort Snelling, Minnesota. While in the West, he painted and photographed the Ojibwa (Chippewa) and Dakota (Sioux) tribes and other Native Americans of the upper Mississippi Valley. His favorite subjects were Indian women performing daily tasks.
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Henry Farny
The Wailer
1895
Gouache on paper, 9 1/8" x 14 3/4"
Farny's paintings clearly reveal his sympathies with the dignified Native Americans he portrayed. Like Farny, many artists were alarmed by the prospect that Indians would soon disappear from the West, and portrayed them as the last of a dying race.
The Wailer depicts an Indian mourning the death of a comrade who is laid out on the bier in the background. It also can be seen as a more general lament for "vanishing" Indians.
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Cornelius D. Kreighoff
The Storyteller
1855 - 1860
Oil on canvas, 12 1/8" x 18 1/4"
Krieghoff was born and studied art in Dusseldorf, Germany. He also trained as a professional musician. After immigrating to the United States in 1837, Krieghoff joined the US Army in the invasion against Seminole Indians in Florida. After this service, he opened a studio in Rochester, New York and later settled in Quebec, becoming one of Canada's most important painters. Kreighoff was known for painting Indians in their daily tasks.
Campbell, Suzan and Kathleen Ash-Milby. The American West: People, Places and Ideas. Santa Fe, NM: Western Edge Press, 2001, pp, 144.
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Cyrus Dallin
Archery Lesson
1907
Bronze, 19" x 11" x 7"
In 1880 Cyrus Dallin traveled east by train. In route, he met a group of Native Americans on their way to Washington. Dallin said the chance encounter influenced his life and art "for half a century." Between 1890 and 1908, Dallin sculpted major Indian monuments. In these he wanted to "synthesize in simple and impressive symbols the tragic history and the pathetic destiny of the aborigines of America."
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William H. D. Koerner
Tomahawk and Long Rifle
1928
Oil on canvas, 27 1/2" x 39 5/8"
"Ask him," instructed the hunter, who knew little of the Blackfeet language, "just why he enters the stockade armed." This painting was published as an illustration for "The Long Rifle," a story by Stewart Edward White. It was serialized in The Saturday Evening Post in 1931.
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Rick Bartow
Dog, Deer, and Me
1996
Pastel, charcoal, graphite 40" x 26"
Yurok artist Rick Bartow creates expressive, thought-provoking images with pastel and graphite. Dog, Deer, and Me is a self portrait. In it, the body of the artist is transformed and mingled with those of a dog and deer, suggesting both physical and spiritual relationships.
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George Catlin
Mandan Indians
1871
Oil on paper, mounted on canvas, 18" x 24 1/2"
I set my self down with the big white man Chiefe [Mandan Chief Bigwhite (Sheheke)] and made a number of enquiries into the tredition of his nation.... He told me his nation first came out of the ground... and saw Buffalow and every kind of animal also grapes, plumbs &c... and deturmined to go up and live upon earth, and great numbers... got upon earth men womin and children.
-- William Clark, Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, August 18, 1806.
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E. M. Hennings
The Hunters
zincograph in sepia on paper
"The paintings of Martin Hennings portray a feeling, a state of mind - about Taos, about Northern New Mexico and its diversity of peoples, and about the fascinating history of the early days of the art colony - a particular mystique which melded landscape, exotic peoples, and exceptional talent."
White, Robert Rankin. The Lithographs and Etchings of E. Martin Hennings. Santa Fe, NM: The Museum of New Mexico Press, 1978.
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