American Frontier Life; Early Western Painting and Prints

This excellent book researches the artistic work of nine early painters of the American Western scene: George Caleb Bingham, Charles Deas, William Ranny, Arthur F. Tait, George Catlin, John Mix Stanley, Charles Wimar, Seth Eastman, and Alfred Jacob Miller. The book focuses primarily on the first four artists mentioned, and includes a final chapter dealing with early prints of the West. Over 125 illustrations accompany the text. All the artists here "instilled in the popular American mind of the period a powerful sense of national identity with the frontier and its people." Their work "exuded an aura of freshness and innocence" and their themes were purely American ones. While Bingham's paintings are often of rural folks assembled in everyday activities (hunting, gathered around a home fire talking, coming together at a polling place on Election Day - this last is certainly a picture worth many thousands of words in its honest portrayal of a vast array of people - rich, old, young, drunk, argumentative, bored - gathered to perform their civic duty), others painted Indians in majestic battle, wagon trains caught in a prairie storm, men fighting a prairie fire, buffalo hunts, Indians in social settings with their tribes: a multitude of scenes set on the Plains or in the mountains of the West. The text, with each chapter authored by a different writer, is authoritative and interesting. Anyone interested in the early West and its representation in paintings and prints will appreciate this book.