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Lot Essay
In June 1837, Alfred Jacob Miller undertook an expedition to the West, departing St. Louis for present-day Wyoming in the company of Scottish nobleman Sir William Drummond Stewart. At the time, Romantic views of Native Americans as the ‘Vanishing Race,’ embodied in literary works like James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans of 1826, spurred visits to the new Western territory by explorers and artists alike. Miller’s dramatic compositions inspired by his journey, such as Sunset, Wind River, reflected this national sentiment towards the Indians and established an important, lasting foundation for Western American Art.
Miller was one of the earliest American artists to ever witness, and attempt to capture, the Western American landscape, predating Albert Bierstadt by nearly twenty-five years and Thomas Moran by over thirty. Specifically, it was within the Wind River Mountains, the locale of the present work, that Miller experienced the most spectacular landscapes of his entire journey. Looking at the “deep purple masses,” “the salmon-coloured granite rock,” and the “immense sheets of clear water,” Miller immediately knew he was witnessing something special, which would inspire generations of Americans in the years to come: “Here is a new field for…the enterprising traveler…These mountain lakes have been waiting for thousands of years, and could afford to wait thousands of years longer, for they are now as fresh and beautiful as if just from the hands of the Creator.” Looking upon a scene like that depicted within Sunset, Wind River, Miller remarked, “in all probability, when we saw them not 20 white men had ever stood on their borders.” (as quoted in R. Tyler, Alfred Jacob Miller: Artist on the Oregon Trail, Fort Worth, Texas, 1982, pp. 33-34)
During his trip, Miller created preliminary sketches and watercolors that he later used to create finished compositions. The grand style in which Miller executed his paintings was grounded in his own Euro-centric artistic development, having spent time copying Old Master paintings in the Louvre and the Vatican and closely observing the work of French Romantic painters, such as Eugene Delacroix. Evidence of these influences can particularly be found in the stylized Arabian-type horses Miller included in his Western scenes, including in Sunset, Wind River. Once permanently settled in his native Baltimore in 1842, Miller completed works that catered to the young aristocracy of a new nation that was transfixed by Romanticism, most obviously in the landscape paintings of Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church. “Miller’s paintings were dreamy, timeless, and quintessentially Romantic.” (F. Flavin, “The Adventurer – Artists of the Nineteenth Century and the Image of the American Indian,” Indian Magazine of History, 2002, p. 1)
With its heroic depiction of its Native American subject and Romantic execution, Sunset, Wind River captures the contemporary notion of Indians living in harmony with the natural world. The Native American chief or brave is regally rendered with dignified posture and expression and dressed in a crown of feathers and buckskin outfit dripping with jewel-like beads. He is identifiably independent, free, honorable and brave, embodying Miller’s field note about a member of the Snake Indians having the “bearing…of a prince--courageous and self-reliant,” or his remark that a Crow chief in “his behavior…was full of dignity, and such as you might look for in a well-bred civilized gentleman.” (as quoted in L. Strong, “Images of Indigenous Aristocracy in Alfred Jacob Miller,” American Art, vol. 13, no. 1, Spring 1999, p. 68) In their embodiment of Romanticism and emphasis on the glorification of their Native American subjects, mature works by Miller, such as the present example, go well beyond the documentary focus of other early Western American artists, including George Catlin and Karl Bodmer. In fact, paintings like Sunset, Wind River represent some of the earliest truly artistic, and decidedly compassionate, renditions of the distinct Western landscape and its peoples. Such works have proven so powerful so as to inform an entire national notion of early Native Americans, and in the process, created an archetype of the inhabitants of the West that has carried on for generations.
Miller was one of the earliest American artists to ever witness, and attempt to capture, the Western American landscape, predating Albert Bierstadt by nearly twenty-five years and Thomas Moran by over thirty. Specifically, it was within the Wind River Mountains, the locale of the present work, that Miller experienced the most spectacular landscapes of his entire journey. Looking at the “deep purple masses,” “the salmon-coloured granite rock,” and the “immense sheets of clear water,” Miller immediately knew he was witnessing something special, which would inspire generations of Americans in the years to come: “Here is a new field for…the enterprising traveler…These mountain lakes have been waiting for thousands of years, and could afford to wait thousands of years longer, for they are now as fresh and beautiful as if just from the hands of the Creator.” Looking upon a scene like that depicted within Sunset, Wind River, Miller remarked, “in all probability, when we saw them not 20 white men had ever stood on their borders.” (as quoted in R. Tyler, Alfred Jacob Miller: Artist on the Oregon Trail, Fort Worth, Texas, 1982, pp. 33-34)
During his trip, Miller created preliminary sketches and watercolors that he later used to create finished compositions. The grand style in which Miller executed his paintings was grounded in his own Euro-centric artistic development, having spent time copying Old Master paintings in the Louvre and the Vatican and closely observing the work of French Romantic painters, such as Eugene Delacroix. Evidence of these influences can particularly be found in the stylized Arabian-type horses Miller included in his Western scenes, including in Sunset, Wind River. Once permanently settled in his native Baltimore in 1842, Miller completed works that catered to the young aristocracy of a new nation that was transfixed by Romanticism, most obviously in the landscape paintings of Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church. “Miller’s paintings were dreamy, timeless, and quintessentially Romantic.” (F. Flavin, “The Adventurer – Artists of the Nineteenth Century and the Image of the American Indian,” Indian Magazine of History, 2002, p. 1)
With its heroic depiction of its Native American subject and Romantic execution, Sunset, Wind River captures the contemporary notion of Indians living in harmony with the natural world. The Native American chief or brave is regally rendered with dignified posture and expression and dressed in a crown of feathers and buckskin outfit dripping with jewel-like beads. He is identifiably independent, free, honorable and brave, embodying Miller’s field note about a member of the Snake Indians having the “bearing…of a prince--courageous and self-reliant,” or his remark that a Crow chief in “his behavior…was full of dignity, and such as you might look for in a well-bred civilized gentleman.” (as quoted in L. Strong, “Images of Indigenous Aristocracy in Alfred Jacob Miller,” American Art, vol. 13, no. 1, Spring 1999, p. 68) In their embodiment of Romanticism and emphasis on the glorification of their Native American subjects, mature works by Miller, such as the present example, go well beyond the documentary focus of other early Western American artists, including George Catlin and Karl Bodmer. In fact, paintings like Sunset, Wind River represent some of the earliest truly artistic, and decidedly compassionate, renditions of the distinct Western landscape and its peoples. Such works have proven so powerful so as to inform an entire national notion of early Native Americans, and in the process, created an archetype of the inhabitants of the West that has carried on for generations.