Alfred Jacob Miller, Indian Hunting Buffalo, n.d., watercolor, 7” x 11 ½”, Permanent Collection (Gift of Paul and Doris Masa)

COLLECTION PROFILE

May 2004

The Artist: Alfred Jacob Miller

Alfred Jacob Miller was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1810. As a child, he demonstrated great love for and ability in art, and was fortunate to have parents who took active interest in his education in this area. He studied art under Thomas Sully in 1831 and 1832, where he showed an aptitude for portrait and landscape art. A pair of local patrons, Robert Gilmor and Johns Hopkins, later of Johns Hopkins University, underwrote Miller’s continued education, sending him to Paris in 1833 to refine his skills at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts. His edification became complete when he left Paris to study at the English Life School in Rome, possibly taking a side-trip to Switzerland where he sketched lake scenes. Upon returning to the United States, Miller attempted to make a career in art, opening a portrait studio in Baltimore. Apparently unsuccessful in this endeavor, he moved to New Orleans in 1837 and met his destiny.

It was in New Orleans that Alfred Jacob Miller met Captain William Drummond Stewart, a British Soldier who was, more importantly, a Scottish sportsman and adventurer at heart. The two men struck up an immediate partnership and proceeded out west, there to see, and more importantly record, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, the roaming buffalo, the free trappers and the wild Indians. It was Stewart’s intention to have Miller’s sketches and preliminary work transformed to oil paintings, which would be hung at his castle in Scotland to remind him of his American journey. The expedition, which commenced in April of 1837 and continued through the autumn of that year, was guided by the celebrated mountain man, Thomas Fitzpatrick, and followed the general path of what would become the Oregon Trail into the Rocky Mountains. Stopping at Fort William, later renowned in history as Fort Laramie, and crossing the great divide over South Pass, the caravan of wagons and carts came to a halt at the rendezvous of the mountain men at Horse Creek in western Wyoming. Along the way, and during the three weeks of the rendezvous, Miller sketched and painted nearly 200 scenes, landscapes and portraits, capturing some of the wildest and most romantic images of the American West ever created. Comparing his Indian subjects to Greek sculptures, and portraying his scenes in wistful, evocative settings, Miller managed to capture the drama and the romance of his subjects in a way that set him completely apart from his contemporaries. As the first artist to paint the Rocky Mountains, and the most prolific recorder of trappers and mountain men during this time period, Miller secured a place for himself as one of the most important artists of the American West.

By November, Miller was back in the United States, where he finished and exhibited many of his paintings before shipping them to Scotland. In 1840 he traveled to Scotland to live at Stewart’s Murthly Castle. It was there that many watercolors and sketches from the journey west were converted to oil paintings of favorite and memorable scenes, and the castle was decorated with the wild and vivid scenes of the American West. His commitment to Stewart fulfilled, Miller returned to America in 1842 with fascinating memories of his travels and a portfolio of 83 small drawings and watercolors. He settled in Baltimore, and spent much of the remainder of his life re-interpreting the sketches he created on the prairie while also painting portraits. His western scenes were often accompanied by descriptive narratives, and the residents of his hometown were enthralled with his depictions of a land, its wildlife and its people that many of them never would see. Miller died at the relatively young age of 64 in 1874; tragically, most of his best sketches and watercolors from his western adventure were thought to be lost, only to be re-discovered in storage at the Peale Museum in Baltimore in 1935.

The Western Art Expeditions of the 1830s

Through the 1830s, and into the 1840s and 1850s, there was a proliferation of voyages out west which included artists. These expeditions were often, but not always, sponsored by European aristocracy and were intended to capture the freedom and romance of the west as it existed in nature, without Euro-American influence. The intent was good, but not entirely successful due to the fact that the Native American cultures had already been heavily influenced by the trappers and traders encountered. Similarly, the landscapes along the river had already been altered by the building of forts and even some small settlements near the mouths of the Missouri and Platte Rivers. Nevertheless, the travels of these artists and their resulting works stand as our most important link to the early American West, and later artists, such as C.M. Russell and Frederic Remington, were directly influenced by the artists of these early expeditions.

Though their work encompassed close time periods and similar subjects, the members of this trio of artists were quite unique in their own right. Catlin has been described as “the inspired primitive” due to his vivid style which may have been short on technical merit, but was rich in brilliance. Bodmer, tagged as “the academic realist,” managed to blend classic, Teutonic majesty with skilled detachment, creating images which are not only beautiful, but also quite realistic. Miller is situated between the two as the romantic poet; his idyllic works are expressively devoted to the actual scenes that he portrayed.

The Work:  Indian Hunting Buffalo

For More Information:

Selected Internet Sources: http://www.askart.com - www.askart.com , http://www.joslyn.org - www.joslyn.org , http://www.marylandartsource.org - www.marylandartsource.org , http://sittingfoxagency.tripod.com - sittingfoxagency.tripod.com

Moore, Robert J., Native American Indians: a Portrait, Stewart, Tabori and Chang, New York, New York, 1997.

Rossi, Paul and Hunt, David, The Art of the Old West, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, New York, 1971.

Join us for an informal discussion on the first Wednesday of each month at 12:15 p.m.

Very interesting Ron.  the citation you gave didn't mention the mnames of the works shown.

This the following the "Indian Hunting Buffalo"?

BEAR

Copyright expired.

bear -

the painting you are showing is a beautiful one, and i suspect that the one we have might be an eariler version of it, or perhaps they were meant to be shown "in sequence." it might have been painted later than the one you posted, but i think earlier because the one you show is much more "refined" and "finished" looking. in a sense, the one you have posted is "nicer" than ours because of its "finished" quality.

i am working on getting an image of ours to post. i'll let you know when i do. the museum's painting is also titled "indian hunting buffalo," but i am finding out that titles don't mean a whole lot. charlie russell had something like 66 paintingstitled "buffalo hunt."

bear (and everyone else) -

here is the miller painting that is the subject of my collection profile. this image is black and white, whereas the painting of course is colored, but it is a great example of miller's work!

Interesting Ron,

The painting looks like a charcoal sketch, which might have been painted in a notebook in the 'field'.  Where as the oil painting was more 'studio' with more thought and detail.  Actually the treatment of the horses is so different I would have suspected maybe even a different artist.

I like the bow/arrow/quiver better than the rifles on the earlier paintings we discussed.  Artist traveling in the early west didn't have the advantage of knowing history.  They had to just 'assume' what they saw was the way it was.  Early artist traveling in the plains states would have assumed that Indians had always had horses and would paint them that way because that is what they knew.  To the Indians the horse was like having a jet plane, modern new thing that revolutionized the Indians life.  The one on one with the buffalo would also seem more 'real'.  Buffaloes are unpredictable, and I doubt any Indian would charge into a stampeding herd.  Instead a wise hunter would pick the loner, maybe an old animal; just like the wolves and griz.

Nice painting. 

BEAR

it is unfortunate that this scan is black and white, cause the color one is awesome. not as majestic as the oils look, of course, but it really spoke to me.

it was also pointed out to me yesterday that the way the horse and buffalo are running is completely impossible, and that both hunter and hunted would be flat on their bellies. from what i understand, the "art" pf portraying running animals was rather difficult to do accurately until the advent of "stop" photograhy, where the movement could really be analyzed. of course, i never saw where it impeded CMR too much!

this and other collection profiles can be found at the http://www.cmrussell.org/ - c.m. russell museum in great falls, montana.

Collection Profile is a program designed to provide in-depth information about a specific piece in the Museum’s permanent collection. Throughout the month, visitors may pick up a copy of the Collection Profile, which includes an interpretation of the artwork. Also provided are details about the artist’s background, techniques and methods, as well as a listing of resources for more information. Copies of past Collection Profiles are usually available; simply contact the front desk or the education department.