Briefly: The Art of the American West Collection
Joslyn Art Museum is noted for its comprehensive holdings of works by the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, whose watercolors and prints document his 1832-34 journey through the Missouri River frontier with the German naturalist Prince Maximilian of Wied, and a major group of watercolors and paintings by Alfred Jacob Miller based on his travels in the Rocky Mountains with Sir William Drummond Stewart in 1837. Joslyn's Western American installations also include paintings and sculpture by George Catlin, George Caleb Bingham, Seth Eastman, Carl Wimar, Charles M. Russell, Thomas Moran, Frederic Remington, and William Robinson Leigh.
Below are highlights selected from Joslyn's Art of the American West collection.
Art of the American West
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Alfred Bierstadt (American, born Germany, 1830-1902),
Dawn at Donner Lake
, ca. 1871-1873,
oil on paper mounted on canvas, 21 1/4 x 29 in.; 53.98 x 73.66 cm
Gift of Mrs. C.N. Dietz, 1934.13
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Karl Bodmer (Swiss, 1809-1893),
Landscape with Herd of Buffalo
, 1833,
watercolor on paper, 9 5/8 x 12 2/3 in.; 24.45 x 31.43 cm
gift of Enron Art Foundation, 1986.49.213
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Karl Bodmer (Swiss, 1809-1893),
Leader of the Mandan Buffalo Bull Society
, 1834,
watercolor on paper, 16 15/16 x 11 5/8 in.; 43.02 x 29.53 cm
gift of Enron Art Foundation, 1986.49.264
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Karl Bodmer (Swiss, 1809-1893),
Mató-Tópe (Four Bears), Mandan Chief
, 1834,
watercolor on paper, 13¾ x 11¼ inches, 41.9 x 29.53 cm
Gift of Enron Art Foundation,, 1986.49.383
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Karl Bodmer (Swiss, 1809-1893),
Mehkskéhme- Sukáhs, Piegan Blackfeet Chief
, 1833,
watercolor on paper, 12 1/2 x 10 1/8 in.; 31.75 x 25.72 cm
gift of Enron Art Foundation, 1986.49.284
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Karl Bodmer (Swiss, 1809-1893),
Mih-Tutta-Hang-Kusch, Mandan Village
, 1834,
watercolor on paper, 11¼ x 16 5/8 inches, 28.58 x 42.23 cm
Gift of Enron Art Foundation, 1986.49.382
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Karl Bodmer (Swiss, 1809-1893),
White Castles on the Missouri
, 1833,
watercolor on paper, 9 x 16 3/8 in.; 22.86 x 41.59 cm
gift of Enron Art Foundation, 1986.49.176
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George Catlin (American, 1796–1872),
A Prairie Picnic Disturbed by a Rushing Herd of Buffalo
, 1854,
oil on canvas, 18 ¾ x 26 ½ in.; 47.63 x 67.31 cm
Gift of Mr. Carman H. Messmore, 1966.624
Catlin received little formal training as an artist, and his quickly rendered landscapes and portraits are often more notable for their spirit than for their accuracy of detail or for beautiful tonalities of color. But the spirit cannot be denied. The artist’s empathy for his human subjects and his enthusiasm for Western adventure are always evident, as in this painting of men endangered by a sudden stampede of buffalo on a vast prairie.
This scene is from his book Letters and Notes of 1841. Catlin depicts himself in a hunter’s cap with his two assistants stopping for a picnic during their journey down the Missouri River. The meal is dramatically interrupted by a buffalo stampede that is headed straight for Catlin.
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Eanger Irving Course (American, 1866-1936),
Hunter in the Aspens (On the War Path)
, 1907,
oil on canvas, 24 x 29 in.; 60.96 x 73.66 cm
Gift of Mrs. C.N. Dietz, 1934.22
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Thomas Hill (American, 1829–1908),
Sierra Nevadas
, 1879,
oil on canvas, 18 x 30 in.; 45.72 x 76.2 cm
Gift of E. A. Kingman, 1956.333
The premier landscape artist in nineteenth-century California, Hill did not move permanently to his adopted state until he was in his forties. For three decades thereafter he painted majestic vistas of the Sierras and the Pacific coast. He maintained a cabin in the mountains and traveled widely, directly experiencing the scenic grandeur he depicted, although — like Bierstadt, Moran, and other Western artists of the period — it was more likely Hill’s intent to interpret nature, not to replicate it.
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Alfred Jacob Miller (American, 1810–1874),
The Surround
, n.d.,
oil on canvas, 66 x 94 ½ in.; 167.64 x 240.03 cm
Museum purchase, 1963.611
In 1837 William Drummond Stewart (Scottish, 1795–1871) asked Miller to accompany him to the Rocky Mountains and record their adventures at the annual fur trading fair known as the rendezvous. Buffalo hunts were high points of the journey for both men. Miller described a “surround” (a Plains Indian method of hunting):
On reaching a proper distance, a signal is given and they all start at once with frightful yells, and commence racing around the herd, drawing their circle closer and closer, until the whole body is huddled together in confusion. Now they begin firing, and as this throws them into a headlong panic and furious rage, each man selects his animal.
Miller made his pictures in the field with pencil, ink, and watercolors. In his Baltimore studio, he translated many of these into oil paintings for Stewart and, later, for other patrons fascinated by the West. This particular picture is one that Miller executed specifically for Murthly Castle, Stewart’s ancestral home in Scotland. The large size and the durable medium of oil on canvas were undoubtedly dictated by its intended display there.
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Alfred Jacob Miller (American, 1810–1874),
The Trapper’s Bride
, 1850,
oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches, 76.2 x 63.5 cm
Museum purchase, 1963.612
Baltimore artist Alfred Jacob Miller was working in New Orleans, when he was hired by William Drummond Stewart in 1837 to traveled with an expedition to the Rocky Mountains and the annual gathering of the fur trade. Miller spent six months in the West, and his experiences supplied the raw material for his art for the rest of his career. Miller painted nine versions of this scene. While historians might view the depicted union as an alliance — and Miller may imply that in the tenderly clasped hands — a contemporary American Indian might see inevitable personal and cultural diminishment in this exchange.
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Thomas Moran (American, 1837-1926),
The Mountain of the Holy Cross
, ca. 1876,
chromolithograph, 13 5/8 x 9 5/8 in.; 34.61.24.45 cm
Gift of Gail and Michael Yanney and Lisa and Bill Roskens, 2001.40.10
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Thomas Moran (American, 1837-1926),
Yellowstone Lake
, ca. 1876,
chromolithograph, 11 1/2 x 16 3/16 in.; 29.21 x 41.12 cm
Gift of Gail and Michael Yanney and Lisa and Bill Roskens, 2001.40.5
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Frederic Sackrider Remington (American, 1861–1909),
Bronco Buster
, 1895,
bronze, height: 24½, 62.23 cm
Bequest of N.P. Dodge, 1954.303
Remington’s name is associated with the “Old West” more than that of any other artist. Although he did make several Western visits (including an unsuccessful ranching venture in 1883), Remington lived most of his life in New York, producing nearly 3,000 paintings, drawings, and sculptures, mostly of Western subjects. A highly successful illustrator, his images appeared in forty-one different periodicals and 142 books.
Bronco Buster was Remington’s first sculpture. Bronze was a new medium for him in 1895, making the phenomenal balance and action of the piece seem even more amazing.
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Charles Marion Russell (American, 1864–1926),
A Serious Predicament
, 1908,
oil on canvas, 20 x 30 in.; 50.8 x 76.2 cm
Gift of Foxley & Co, 2000.27
The two artists most inextricably linked to the Old West are Charlie Russell and Frederic Remington. Their sculptures, paintings, and magazine illustrations were immensely popular in the late nineteenth century and are revered by aficionados today. Russell worked as a cowboy in his youth and lived in Montana most of his life. He took pride in the accuracy of his ranch scenes, which are typically full of action and adventure. Russell’s titles usually reveal the stories that his images are intended to tell. The alternate title for this painting, Range Mother, further spells out the “serious predicament” in which the charging cow has placed the anxious cowboys.
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Worthington Whittredge (American, 1820–1910),
Long’s Peak, Colorado
, 1866,
oil on paper on canvas, 8 ¼ x 21 ½ in.; 20.96 x 54.61 cm
Museum purchase, 1965.58
Whittredge was one of the later Hudson River School landscape artists, whom he defined as painters of “more homely [than grandiose] scenery.” On his first trip West, in 1866, he followed the Platte River to central Colorado and then traveled south along the front range of the Rocky Mountains. The vistas he encountered on this trip were anything but “homely,” and they deeply impressed him: “I had never seen the plains or anything like them [and most of my pictures show them] with the mountains in the distance.” Whittredge made his field sketches, like Long’s Peak, on the spot, often on sheets of paper torn in half to give them the same horizontality as the plains.
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N. C. Wyeth (American, 1882–1945),
Untitled (model for ad for Fisk Cord Tires)
, 1919,
oil on canvas on panel, 32 x 71 ½ in.; 81.28 x 181.61 cm
Museum purchase with funds from Collectors’ Choice VI, 1995, and the Major Art Purchase Fund, 1995.2
In the early twentieth century, N. C. Wyeth created illustrations for new editions of popular adventure books, including Treasure Island and The Last of the Mohicans. He brought the same lively spirit and talent for depicting action to his portrayals of the West, drawn partly from a brief experience there in 1904, and perhaps owing even more to the work of Frederic Remington. This painting, a model for a 1919 advertisement for Fisk Cord Tires, makes comic visual reference to the common notion that Indians, no matter how noble or quaint, were doomed to be left in the dust of modern technology.
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