Jessica Crabtree

February 2, 1830: Seth Eastman is stationed at Fort Snelling, Minnesota

Seth Eastman (born 1808) was a West Point graduate who worked as an illustrator and mapmaker in the army. His first assignment to Fort Snelling – one of the army’s most important posts on what was then the edge of the frontier – marked the start of a life-long journey that resulted in an outstanding pictorial record of the Dakota people.

Eastman’s tours at Fort Snelling gave him a special advantage as an artist. Working as an embedded journalist with the army, he served as a military liaison with the Dakota (or Santee), learning their language and customs, and staying with them for extended periods, giving him valuable experience that he channeled into hundreds of sketches and small paintings.

During his first stay, he married Wakanin ajin win (“Stands Sacred”) the daughter of a Santee chief, and had a daughter named Winona. According to the custom of the day, however, such a marriage was not legally binding for an American male – and when he was reassigned nearly two years later, this “unofficial union” was dissolved. From then on he had no further association with his Indian family.

(His daughter Winona later took the name Mary Nancy Eastman and was the mother of another famous Eastman, Ohiyesa – also known as Charles Eastman. A writer, teacher, and advocate, he became the first Native American medical doctor.)

When Eastman later married into a prominent Virginia family, his wife Mary accompanied him to various military posts – including a second tour at Fort Snelling that lasted seven years – and wrote stories about Dakota life for which Eastman provided illustrations.

In 1847, Congress commissioned Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s series Indian Tribes of the United States, a large-scale illustrated series similar to the landmark
McKenney-Hall & King work of a generation earlier. Eastman immediately petitioned for the job of illustrating the work, but was at first denied. Eventually, through the influence of his wife and friends, he won a furlough to concentrate on the artwork. The project was five years in the making and ultimately consisted of 6 volumes and nearly 300 detailed illustrations.

The success of the work led to other government commissions, many of which now hang in the nation’s capitol. While his paintings have long been recognized for their historic value, they were not always accepted without controversy, because they were so objective in portraying Dakota people and their customs at a time dominated by a strong negative bias, even open hostility against them. For the most part he portrayed the traditional village life of Minnesota’s farming communities, and not the more familiar – and more romanticized – nomadic horse culture of the Plains. Eastman’s documentary accuracy, and his thorough and detailed precision, make his portfolio such a monumental achievement.

Before his death in 1875, Eastman would have been witness to the wars and forced removals that opened Minnesota to American expansion and systematically dismantled the Dakota lifestyle he had spent so many years documenting. Ironically, his own grandson Charles was among the community of relocated Dakota who fled first to Canada, then to North Dakota; there he attended mission schools, later to graduate from the best colleges in the East. Like his grandfather, Charles also married an accomplished woman with a deep interest in making a written record of Native American cultures. As a certified medical doctor, he was assigned to the Pine Ridge reservation where he was a first responder following Wounded Knee.

It is a paradox that these two men, despite their close relation and their individual influence in giving the world a glimpse of Dakota culture, were alienated by convention on two opposing sides.

More on the Eastman family:

Seth Eastman: Painting the Dakota – companion website for the PBS docudrama (excellent resource!)

Wikipedia: Seth and Mary Eastman

PBS “History Detectives” Episode: Investigating Eastman’s pieces A researcher determines an uncovered Eastman painting to be a forgery – but in the process explores some of the ironies about Eastman’s career and relationship to the Dakota. He also meets with a descendent of Eastman’s Dakota marriage.

Historic Fort Snelling – Seth Eastman

Minnesota Historical Society: Seth Eastman Exhibit

See also:

“Ohiyesa” – Charles Eastman

This Day in History: Charles Bird King

November 10, 1697: Birth of preeminent English painter, printmaker, and political cartoonist William Hogarth

Hogarth was born to a lower-class London family. At the beginning of his art career, he started out as an engraver’s apprentice, but became more independent as the demand for his prints rose. This enabled him to marry his art teacher’s daughter and live comfortably, honing his skills as a painter and satirist and becoming well-established as a portrait painter by the 1730′s. His portrait of the actor David Garrick in his role as Richard III sold for the highest price of any English portrait up to that time.

Below: My favorite Hogarth pieces are the serious, sensitive portraits such as the “Servants” above and the tantalizing, enigmatic Shrimp Girl.

Most of Hogarth’s work reveals his voice as a social commentator. He is best known for his “morality serials” depicting the vices and social ills plaguing populous urban England, and the sham of upper-class manners. Series such as “The Rake’s Progress,” “The Harlot’s Progress,” and “Marriage a la Mode” were published in installments and quickly became wildly popular. The rampant pirating of his pieces, and similar experiences of his colleagues, prompted him to lobby Parliament for the creation of the Engraver’s Copyright Act, which was passed in 1735.

Left: Another portrait of Garrick, this time in a more informal setting with his wife.

Hogarth’s drastic rise in social status never seemed to hamper the strong sense of ethics and civic responsibility reflected in his art. He used his means to found an art school, which was a precursor to famous Royal Academy. And he and his wife, unable to have a family of their own, fostered foundling children. His popularity, and the respect he enjoyed from his peers and his public, is portrayed in the epitaph Garrick wrote upon Hogarth’s death in 1764:

“Farewell great Painter of Mankind
Who reach’d the noblest point of Art
Whose pictur’d Morals charm the Mind
And through the Eye correct the Heart.

If Genius fire thee, Reader, stay,
If Nature touch thee, drop a Tear:
If neither move thee, turn away,
For Hogarth’s honour’d dust lies here.”

Wikipedia: William Hogarth

WikiGallery: Online Collection of Hogarth’s Prints and Paintings

November 5, 1927: Birth of painter Howard Terpning

Above: “Father Prays”

Terpning is one of the outstanding and preeminent artists of Western and Native American culture. His style is recognizably masterful and effortless – a true gift to art, accounting for the almost endless list of awards and recognitions he has received over the years.

Terpning was born and raised in the Midwest. He pursued art early on but did not study professionally until returning from military service. He worked as an apprentice illustrator and eventually became a freelance artist, illustrating for major publications like Time Magazine & Reader’s Digest, and producing iconic movie posters.

Left: One of my favorites – “Three Generations”

In the 70′s he decided to pursue a passion for Western history & culture that was sparked during his early travels in the West. The depiction of Plains Indian life, and the culture of the West, has become the real signature of his work, making him one of today’s most collected Western artists. It is remarkable to have such a legend still among us. Happy birthday Howard!

Wikipedia: Howard Terpning

Howard Terpning Western Art at the Greenwich Workshop

Portfolio Slideshow – Nearly a hundred of Terpning’s best-known pieces

Today I’m paying another visit to the Louvre website. Last time, I toured one of the “Closer Look” thematic studies – today I decided to try out the Kaleidoscope feature under “Collections.” Pick a theme – mythology, still life, monarchs etc. – and before you flashes an array of art pieces from the Louvre’s collection. I choose portraits.

For an art lover and a history buff, it’s a bit tantalizing to see such a diversity of pieces flash before your eyes: medieval miniatures; pompous, dignified Renaissance busts; a hazy profile study by Da Vinci; a brusque Revolution-era portrait by David. A clay head sculpture of an important man, found in an ancient Persian burial vault, stares back at us large as life, looking for all the world as if he was still observing life from beyond the grave. The unusual Elamite style strikes us with its prominent Oriental features and stylized curly beard and hair.

The first portrait to draw me further in is that of a young woman from Roman Egypt. She reminds me of the mosaic portraits of ancient Italy, with her smooth classical features and huge, dark lustrous eyes.

The incredible detail is achieved on cedar panel by encaustic painting, an unusual method that combines the pigments with beeswax or other resins to adhere to the wood. Apparently this technique was a signature of late Egyptian funerary artwork; the finished portrait would then be placed over the face of the mummy. One would imagine that the ancient artist had to work quickly with the melted wax. Or was his palette held in a container over a flame, to keep the pigment liquid? A quick google reveals that encaustic painting is widely used by artists today.

The exhibit description explains how the fine lines of the eyelashes are created by scratching through the encaustic layers to expose the black base coat beneath – a method not unlike the one I use in pastel on suede. Judging by the adornments in this portrait, the young woman was apparently of noble rank, and her family must have spared no means in her burial or in commemorating her by commissioning this exquisite likeness.

The Fayum portraits would be a great topic for a later post. It seems to me this level of depth and realism was not approached again until the Renaissance.

A little less remote in time and place is Chardin’s Self Portrait, 1771, pastel on paper (a medium he adopted only in the latter part of his career). The strong diagonal grain often seen in pastel pieces always makes me think of a driving rain!

I always loved the frank, unassuming personality of Chardin’s portrait. His decision to portray himself in such a low-key, mediocre way is unprepossessing, yet remarkably self-assured. The masterful loose strokes have a futuristic nuance that reminds me of some of Hogarth’s pieces from a generation earlier (the collage of his servants’ faces, perhaps, which is a favorite of mine – or even the Shrimp Girl?)

That’s all for this quick glance – but as usual I leave the exhibit with something to mull over for next time. Isn’t it ironic that it’s impossible to leave a museum – full of old things and old ideas – without taking away something new?

Scientists unearth a paint workshop in Blombos Cave in South Africa

The ancient Stone Age artists used abalone shells and quartzite grinders to produce pigments with ochres and charcoal, using animal oils as binders. It’s not clear how these ‘pigment pastes’ were being used – for tableau painting on smooth rock faces, body painting, or other ritual practices. Earlier finds suggested that blocks of pigment may have been used almost like pastels, like those responsible for Europe’s famous Stone Age cave paintings. But these artifacts predate those by tens of thousands of years, making them among the oldest evidence of conceptual thinking ever discovered.

Just imagine sweeping out the windblown sand to uncover the intact workshop of a prehistoric artist, complete with supplies and paints. Makes you think how little some things have changed over the ages. This artist even favored an ocean-front studio, like some modern artists I know…

BBC News: Ancient ‘paint factory’ unearthed

Angel de Cora is not exactly a household name, but her story is as fascinating as it is little-known. A Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) with French ancestry, DeCora became the most influential Native American artist of the early 20th century.

She was born in 1871 and grew up during a time of great turmoil and upheaval for Native people. She attended the Hampton Institute, one of the era’s famous Indian boarding schools, where like many other Indian children she faced the twin hardships of separation from family and the systematic indoctrination of a deeply racist policy.

Her remarkable academic and artistic achievements earned her a ticket to advanced art training in Philadelphia and Boston under some of the country’s most renowned instructors. She absorbed multiple styles and incorporated them into a unique illustrating signature.

Right: Illustration from the book “The Middle Five” (Image: AngelDeCora.com)

Angel was reluctant to part with her heritage and stood out by making her skills a catalyst for expressing her people’s culture and experience in a modern context. By being such a “media maverick” she defied common stereotypes about Indians (and about women) and became a trend-setter in the field of Native American art. She was a conundrum to a public eager to categorize Indians into two classes: the backward, recalcitrant outsiders who needed to be assimilated into white society, or the romanticized “children of nature,” the noble savages of a lost age.

She illustrated her own stories as well as books by Zitkala Sa and Elaine Goodale Eastman. Her husband William ‘Lone Star’ Dietz, a Hampton alumnus, was also an artist and together they collaborated on many projects.

Some of her most important contributions were made during her appointment as an art teacher at the Carlisle Indian School, where she often pushed the boundaries of traditional teaching methods, using art to help her students rediscover rather than suppress their roots.

Left: DeCora and her husband William Dietz (Image: AngelDeCora.com)

She acted as a kind of cultural liaison with several government agencies and was constantly bombarded by the prejudice and incompetence of the cumbersome bureaucracy. She often traveled to Indian communities throughout the Midwest gathering ethnographic information, not only to reinforce her teaching skills but to contribute to a permanent artistic record of Indian cultures. In this role she was a major force in bringing Native arts and crafts into the public spotlight.

She died in 1919 at the age of 47. Few of her original works survive, but reproductions in books and magazines such as the popular Harper’s offer a rich glimpse of her versatile techniques, from the intricate realist detail of her early pieces, to the strong tonal style of her late works.

Left: Illustration from the novel “Yellow Star” (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Angel DeCora: American Artist and Educator – Sarah McAnulty (a very good biography of DeCora)

Wikipedia: Angel de Cora

August 30, 1748: Birth of the French painter Jacques-Louis David

David was born to a privileged family of Parisian architects during the height of France’s ancien regime. He was expected to follow this profession, but his early education quickly revealed a strong proclivity for art and a heady temperament – both of which would define the course of his adult life.

His first art teacher was an old-school artist of the Rococo style who recognized David’s strong Classical sympathies and sent him to a colleague, Joseph-Marie Vien, who became David’s long-time mentor. Under his tutelage, David attended the Royal Academy (part of what is today the Louvre). In 1774, after several failed attempts, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome, and later traveled to Italy with Vien where he immersed himself in Classical art forms and early Renaissance painting.

Upon returning to Paris five years later, he was finally admitted membership to Royal Academy, and was also granted residence at the Louvre by royal appointment. Despite all these honors he was impatient for greater recognition and frustrated by what he felt was discrimination against his age. His problematic attitude did not endear him to his superiors and his brash, ardent and sometimes narcissistic nature meant inevitable collisions with his peers and his patrons. But his position offered him both means and security and the 1780s found him a man in his forties with a family, a comfortable living, an expanding student roll, and a growing reputation.

Left: Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his Wife (1788)

Lavoisier was a brilliant French scientist who was executed during the Reign of Terror on minor charges, partly through the influence of Marat (the same Marat whose death David later portrayed so iconically). Fellow scientist Lagrange said, “It took them only an instant to cut off his head, but France may not produce another such head in a century.”

David’s appetite for the heroic and grandiose, however, was about to be filled, and he was soon swept up in the radical changes erupting throughout France. His quest for the Neoclassical ideal – austere, noble, self-sacrificing – found a new outlet on the stage of the French Revolution.

David and other Neoclassicists felt they could elevate the artistic plane of their society by reviving the order and refinement of Greco-Roman civilization, uplifting humanity to a new level of honor, nobility, and reason. They saw the Revolution as the opportunity, and art as the catalyst.

This worldview is exemplified by paintings of the period, such as The Oath of the Horatii (1784) and The Death of Socrates (1787), which glorify their Classical subjects and project their values and virtues onto the revolutionary cause. But they also illustrate how easily the line between public expression and propaganda can become blurred.

True to his impetuous nature, David became embroiled in politics – as a member of the Jacobin Club and a friend of Robespierre, voting for the king’s execution in 1792 and even turning his influence against the Royal Academy (possibly out of frustration in not receiving all the benefits he felt he deserved). He organized public spectacles: festivals, processions, and carefully orchestrated unveilings of politically charged paintings, intended to stir or sway popular sentiment.

The limelight was intense but short-lived. As revolutionary fervor escalated out of control and the Reign of Terror began, internal power struggles undermined Jacobin leadership and David himself only narrowly escaped being executed alongside Robespierre. He landed in prison where he painted his famous self-portrait. This brush with danger was enough to satisfy even David’s thirst for the heroic.

“This is Civilisation” presented by art critic Matthew Collings – This excerpt gives a visual tour of The Oath of the Horatii – austere, paternalistic, typically Roman. The episode examines the careers of both David and Spanish painter Goya to contrast their evaluation of human nature.

(continue reading…)

So here’s my first foray into the web interactives of the Louvre Museum. First of all I’ve got say how much I love the practical layout of the features – so much to see but all very accessible and well-organized.

Out of the list of thematic mini-sites I’ve chosen “Rembrandt the Draftsman”. Of the three areas in which Rembrandt made his mark (no pun intended) – painting, etching, and drawing – this exhibit highlights the last. And with pencil and paper being my first love I could hardly resist.

France, it seems, has had a long history of Rembrandt appreciation, and French collectors of his drawings go way back. The Louvre alone possesses 64 of them, and many of these were acquired in the early 18th century.

Rembrandt’s drawings, to a greater extent than those of other artists, are like strobe photos of an artist’s mind in action – like a flip-book of creative ideas taking shape in his head. He sketched prolifically and copied works of his mentors to explore their method and many of these sketches are still extant.

Interior with Saskia in Bed – a scene from Rembrandt’s own home. This one I found unique in its masses of heavy rich shading that give structure to the composition. A very warm and domestic example of his genre painting.

Most of his drawings are done with chalk or ink wash or a combination of both. With his distinctive blunt, rapid, scrambled style, they are spontaneous enough to capture the essence of the subject with very little premeditation and an added sense of lightness and motion (especially so in his narrative scenes).

Cornelis Claesz – This was one of the most articulate and sensitive in the exhibit. It uses not only ink and wash but chalk and gouache, and is much more elaborate and self-sufficient than most of his drawings. The subject was a prominent Dutch Mennonite.

Below, completely different in tone and subject, is the sketch Shah Jahan on Horseback, with a Falcon on his Left Wrist. It shows Rembrandt’s uncanny readiness to assimilate other styles. He must have been fascinated with the line and texture of Oriental painting. He made this copy of the Mughal ruler’s portrait from a miniature, probably a piece in his own eclectic collection. His widely multifarious interests qualify him as something of a Renaissance man, notwithstanding the Netherlands’ cosmopolitan society.

The most interesting section (I think) was ‘Rembrandt the Narrator.’ He was certainly at his best as a storyteller – his exuberant curiosity and attention to detail made the combination of human dynamics with an eloquent (and sometimes flamboyant) presentation a no-brainer. I think they reveal his character the most. They exploit his favorite subjects – the expressiveness of the elderly face, the body language of individuals in states of strong emotion, and the intrigue of exotic settings and dress.

The counterpoint between his subjects is strong but not forced, because there is a real sense of innocence in Rembrandt’s characters. I think part of this quality stems from the way he explored lesser-known subjects: for instance, rather than painting many dozens of Madonnas over and over, he looked for the dramatic potential in obscure Old Testament scenes, such as Jacob’s sons returning from Egypt, or in the pages of the Apocrypha.

The Parable of the Talents – To the right is a close-up of the hired man: his face downcast, and his posture suggesting even more strongly his embarrassment and despondency.

Something remarkable about Rembrandt’s sketches is that no matter how spontaneous or cursory they appear, the faces are always given equal treatment. Even with just a few marks he makes sure that they convey the suggestion of expression that carries the symbolic weight of the narrative.

And finally, landscapes first appeared in his portfolio around 1640, done mostly from plein-air sketches. These have become fixtures of his portfolio representing the Dutch style (of course how could the mention of Rembrandt fail to conjure a vision of those iconic ink-wash windmills?)

River with Wooded Banks – one of Rembrandt’s later pieces. It illustrates how drastically his style softened over time. It is strikingly atmospheric and harks to a much later style of painting – perhaps to Turner or even the Impressionists?

The Old Masters: Rembrandt van Rijn This Day in History