American Frontier Life: Early Western Painting and Prints

Trappers, emigrants, adventurers and traders were elevated into ideal frontier types in 19th century American painting. The picturesque sentimentality of much of this art is on display in a traveling exhibiton documented by this album. However, the catalogue is interesting for a number of reasons. Besides stalwarts like George Caleb Bingham, Alfred Jacob Miller and George Catlin, the volume includes several less well-known painters. One of them, Charles Deas, lived among the Indians and portrayed their lives with deep feeling. Essays document the role that popular lithographs played in transmitting frontier images to a broad audience. A handful of the pictures are valuable as an ethnographic record of vanishing folkways. The text also demonstrates that writers such as Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper influenced the painters' pioneer vision. (May 15)