FAR AWAY BUT CLOSE: 19TH CENTURY EUROPEAN ARTİSTS DEPİCTİNG AMERİCAN INDİANS

https://doi.org/10.29013/EJA-19-3-82-86

Sibel Almelek Isman, PhD in Western Art and Contemporary Art, Assoc. Prof, Dokuz Eylul University E-mail: sibel.almelek@deu.edu.tr

FAR AWAY BUT CLOSE: 19th CENTURY EUROPEAN ARTiSTS DEPiCTiNG AMERiCAN INDiANS

Abstract. Some of the European artists of the 19th century shared a common interest in the lives of North American Indians. Although they were far away from them geographically, they felt close at heart and depicted their portraits. Some had seen the new continent with their own eyes, some only reflected their imagination with the inspiration of literature.

Introduction ans judged Indians by their own values. Europeans

"In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue". This quickly decided that these savages needed civilisa-simple childhood rhyme was designed to help school children remember when and by whom the New World was discovered. However when Chrsi-topher Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola in October 1492, the people he met had already lived there for thousands of years. Far from a discovery, far from a New World, Columbus sailed into an old world full of diverse peoples with a myriad of cultures [1, 1].

At the dawn of the 16th century, as the European conquest of the Americas began, indigenous peoples resided throughout the Western Hemisphere. They were soon decimated by the effects of epidemic disease, military conquest, and enslavement. Many indigenous American groups were hunting-and-gathering cultures, while others were agricultural peoples. American Indians domesticated a variety of plants and animals, including corn, beans, squash, potatoes and other tubers, turkeys, llamas, and alpacas, as well as a variety of semi domesticated species of nut- and seed-bearing plants [7].

Despite the centuries-old diversity among Indian peoples in North America, Europeans refused to see diversity in Indian America. Rather, they chose to view all Indians as "savages". Inevitably, Europetion. By civilisation, Europeans meant Christianiza-tion, the adoption of European clothing and settling down to an agricultural life [3, 6-7].

Some of the 19th century European artists were interested in collecting and depicting images from the world ofAmerican Indians. They must have been intrigued by their culture and natural life style.

Depictions of American Indians

French Neoclassical painter Anne Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson (1767-1824), depicted Atala, the Indian heroine of François-René de Chateaubriand&s (1768-1848) novel, in his picture The Entombment of Atala dated 1808 (Figure 1). After their all-night vigil, Indian Chactas and Father Aubry are burying the corpse of the beautiful Atala in the cave. Torn between her love for Chactas and the vow she took to remain a virgin and a Christian, Atala committed suicide. Girodet drew his subject from Chateaubriand&s "Atala, or the Loves of Two Savages in the Wilderness" (Atala, ou Les Amours de deux sauvages dans le désert) (1801), set in America in the 17th century. This novel by the first French romantic novelist was published in his hugely popular "The Genius of Christianity". The book celebrated Catholicism at the time when Napoleon Bonaparte signed

the Concordat with the Church. The exoticism, the defense of the innocence of primitive peoples and the religious sentiment that characterized the novel are all transposed into the picture. Girodet showed this painting at the 1808 Salon, where it was widely acclaimed. Chateaubriand admired the painting, as did another romantic writer, Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) [9].

Trioson&s The Entombment of Atala is a good example of his neoclassical style married with a romantic tone. Chateaubriand, considered the founder of French romantic literature, conceived of this story while traveling through the southern part of North America during the French Revolution [4, 98].

"Atala" has the character of a classical idyll, but with a Romantic taste for the exotic and a religious theme that reflects the Catholic renewal in France. These elements are readily apparent in Trioson&s canvas, which treats the entombment of the virtouos young woman in the cave like the entombment of a Christian martyr. The cross on the hillside can be noted [2, 662].

The characters of Chateaubriand&s "Atala" (1801) and "René" (1802) with their story of impossible love and despair, became prototypes for the romantic hero. Emotions and their projection onto the world of nature became standard [1, 13].

Figure 1. Anne Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, The Entombment of Atala, 1808, oil on canvas, 167 x x 210 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris

French Romantic painter Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863), was another artist who was inspired by "Atala", which narrates the fate of the Natchez tribe in the wake of the French and Indian War (1754-63). After putting the canvas aside for about a decade, he finally completed The Natchez (Figure 2) for the Paris Salon of 1835. In the catalogue, Delacroix provided this explanatory note: "Fleeing the massacre of their tribe, two young savages traveled up the Mississippi River. During the voyage, the woman was taken by pain of labor. The moment is that when the father holds the newborn in his hands, and both regard him tenderly" [8].

Delacroix never set foot in America nor is he known to have met an American Indian. But when he read Chateaubriand&s &&Atala", he knew that the story was for him. In 1822, when he was 24, he noted in his journal that he must one day tackle the scene in which an American Indian couple flees, in terror and alone, after being driven from their homes in the American South by a French army. While they are making their way up the Mississippi in a small boat, the young woman is seized with labor pains. They scramble ashore. She gives birth on the bank. Her milk is tainted, and the child dies [10].

Figure 2. Eugene Delacroix, The Natchez, 1824 and 1835, oil on canvas, 90 x 116.8 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Swiss artist Karl Bodmer (1809-1893) was the first artist to ascend the Missouri River above Fort Union. Prince Maximilian of Wied had long been

interested in the natural history of North America. When he was ready to embark on the new venture he engaged the talents of the 23 year old Bodmer. He was a skilled watercolorist and became one of the finest landscape painters of the American West. He created illustrations for a period of two years [5, 4-5].

Bodmer&s works can readily be divided into three groups: the landscapes, wildlife such as bisons and turtles and portraits of Indian Americans. The value of Bodmer&s art is heightened not only becuse of its beauty but also because he illustrated the proud residents of the upper Missouri while their culture was still in bloom [5, 16-17]. His 1844 dated Scalp Dance of the Minitarres (Figure 3) presents rituals and costumes of American Indians like many of his other works.

Figure 3. Karl Bodmer, Scalp Dance of the Minitarres, 1844, aquatint on paper, 43.5 x 59 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

French Romantic artist Francois Auguste Biard (1799-1882), traveled widely and is best known for his genre paintings that depict the cruelties of slavery. In 1858, Biard traveled to Rio de Janerio, where he visited the rain forests and sketched the native populations. He was one of the earliest Europeans to meet many of these tribal peoples and when he returned to France in 1862, he published a travel journal of his years in Brazil and added artistic representations of exotic peoples [4, 43]. His picture entitled Amazonian Indians Worshipping the Sun God, (Figure 4) depicts Indians welcoming the

first moments of the sunshine in the fading darkness of a forest.

Figure 4. Francois Auguste Biard, Amazonian Indians Worshipping the Sun God, c. 1860, oil on canvas, 80.9 x x 100 cm, Pinacoteca de Estado de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo

French Neoclassical painter Emile Charles Lecomte Vernet (1821-1900) visualised Minnehaha, Indian heroine from the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow&s (1807-1882) epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855). Vernet&s picture Minnehaha dated 1871 (Figure 5), shows the young and beautiful Indian woman in her traditional costume in a vast natural setting. Her almost bare chest is adorned with a necklace and she is looking directly at the viewer with her misty black eyes.

Figure 5. Emile Charles Lecomte Vernet, Minnehaha, 1871, oil on canvas, 77 x 112 cm, Private Collection

Figure 6. Frances Anne Hopkins, Minnehaha Feeding Birds, c. 1880, oil on canvas, Private Collection

Figure 7. Edouard Drouot, Indian on the Horseback, bronz, gilt, dark brown patina and ivory, 53.5 x 61 cm, Private Collection

English artist Frances Anne Hopkins (1838-1919) also depicted Minnehaha on her canvas. Minnehaha Feeding Birds dated circa 1880 (Figure 6), shows the young woman sailing peacefully on a canoe and feeding the birds. Hopkins& husband was secretary to the governor of the Hudson&s Bay Company and they settled in lower Canada in 1853. Her dated sketches provide a record of brief trips to Quebec, the Eastern Townships, Ottawa, Toronto, Niagara Falls, and New York. The travels

which most influenced her painting were tours with her husband by large fur-trade canoes on the upper Great Lakes and the Mattawa and Ottawa rivers from 1864 to 1869 [6]. This painting dates to a time period when the artist was back home but it can be seen that her memories of canoe traveling were fresh.

French Art Deco sculptor Edouard Drouot (1859-1945) was interested in creating bronze Indian male warriors. Indian on the Horseback (Figure 7) is a noteworthy example of his approach to the wild side of Indian life.

Conclusion

Many North American artists of the 19th century such as George Catlin (1796-1872), Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) and Thomas Moran (1837-1926) depicted the images of American Indians. It can be considered as a natural interest since they share the same country. But it is both exciting and rewarding to see that some of the European artists of the same century were also interested in the lives of American Indians. Since Romanticism and Neoclassicsm were the dominating styles in the first half of the 19th century, the pictures ofAmerican Indians show the traces of these artistic approaches.

Literary works presenting American Indians such as Chateaubriand&s &Atala" and Longfellow&s "The Song of Hiawatha" inspired artists. Trioson, Delacroix, Vernet and Hopkins had been obviously moved by the characters of these works and internalized their joys and sorrows.

Bodmer, Biard and Hopkins had traveled to North America so their pictures reflect their experiences and observations. The costumes and rituals of these tribes are presented in ethnographically accurate details.

European artists might had been far away from these tribal people but it can be read from the pictures that they had empathized with them.

References: