A Blackfoot Indian on Horse-back

Artist Karl Bodmer (Swiss, 1809 - 1893)

Author Prince Maximilian of Wied (1782 - 1867)

Date1832-1834

MediumHand-colored aquatint

Dimensions11 3/8 × 16 1/2 in. (28.9 × 41.9 cm)

ClassificationsPrint

Credit LineCrystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2009.26.67

Accession number 2009.26.67

DescriptionDisbound from an oblong quarto volume of thirty-three vignette plates

On View

Not on view

ProvenanceAuthor; to Frederick Schuchart, NY, 1844; (William Reese Company, New Haven, CT); purchased by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR, 2009
Label TextDuring the first week of August, 1833, while en route to Fort McKenzie, the westernmost point of the expedition, Prince Maximilian and his companions entered the territory of the Atsina and Blackfeet nations, who at this time carried on a profitable trade in hides and furs with the Anglo-Americans on the Upper Missouri. From August 9 through September 14, Karl Bodmer made numerous studies among the Piegan, Blood, and other tribes related to or affiliated with the Blackfeet, who were widely celebrated as hunters, fighters, and horsemen. His individual portraits of Blackfeet chiefs and medicine men are among the finest he produced during his travels in North America. He added dramatic flair to this portrait of an unidentified Blackfeet man on horseback. It was copied many times by other printmakers and illustrators of books on frontier life in the nineteenth century. The horse is idealized to appeal to the taste of European viewers, more closely resembling a Barb or Arab horse than the ordinary Plains pony typical of that period.