Edward Kemeys (1843-1907)

Chief Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotaka)

Details

Edward Kemeys (1843-1907)
Chief Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotaka)
inscribed 'E. KEMEYS' with artist's device (lower left)
bronze with brown patina
26½ x 19 in. (67.3 x 48.3 cm.)

Provenance

Private collection, Greenwich, Connecticut.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 2011.

Literature

Winslow Bros. Company, Photographs and Sketches of Ornamental Iron and Bronze Executed by the Winslow Bros. Company, Chicago, Illinois, 1901, p. 240, no. 1240, another example illustrated.
Art Institute of Chicago, Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Architecture, Chicago, Illinois, 1917, p. 78, no. 920.
P.J. Broder, Bronzes of the American West, New York, 1974, p. 54, pl. 47, another example illustrated.

Lot Essay

Edward Kemeys first became interested in sculpture at the Central Park Zoo, where he happened to observe an artist modeling animals while working there as a civil engineer. Inspired, he traveled to the West in the late 1870s, studying and modeling from nature. His work was exhibited at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876, and in 1892 he opened a studio in Chicago. Throughout his life, he continued to take trips out West to find subject matter for his art.

The present sculpture was modeled in 1884. Although unmarked by a foundry, it was likely cast by Winslow Bros. Company, Chicago, Illinois. Other examples are in the collections of the Rockwell Museum of Western Art, Corning, New York; Weatherspoon Art Gallery, University of North Carolina at Greensboro; and Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine.

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