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Lot Essay
“Buffalo images help us to see an image of what the West was,” Larry Barsness writes, “an Eden filled with these pastoral wild animals, an adventureland filled with buffalo to chase…a symbol of America’s diversity of experience. Artists saw all of this and captured it…Their pictures of buffalo reveal much of what attracts us to the West of yesterday.” ( “The Bison in Art and History,” The American West: The Magazine of Western History, vol. XIV, no. 2, March/April 1977, pp. 11-12) Indeed, Alfred Jacob Miller’s heroic The Buffalo Hunt painted circa 1850 transports the modern viewer into the artist’s dramatic vision of the Old West. The artist applies Old Master archetypes and techniques to convey the Native American’s moment of heroic glory as he strikes the final blow in his battle with the buffalo. Formerly in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, The Buffalo Hunt epitomizes the romantic view imbedded into Miller’s thrilling Western subjects.
In June 1837, Miller undertook his expedition to the West, departing St. Louis for the Green River, in present day Wyoming, in the company of Scottish nobleman Sir William Drummond Stewart. During his trip, Miller created over 150 preliminary sketches and watercolors, which he later used to create finished compositions in both watercolor and oil. Many were created in his studio on the grounds of Stewart’s ancestral home in Scotland. After Miller settled back in his native Baltimore in 1842, he found new patrons for his art among both the wealthy families of the city’s elite as well as the rising merchant class. The present work was originally acquired by Thomas Swann, President of B&O Railroad who was elected Mayor of Baltimore in 1856 and Governor of Maryland in 1864. At the same time Swann purchased the present work, he also acquired another painting known as Buffalo Hunt, which is now in the American Museum of Western Art in Denver.
In 1858, Miller created an annotated portfolio of 200 watercolors for William T. Walters, now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. The project included a scene closely related to the present work. The artist’s original text accompanying the composition describes this exciting culmination of the buffalo hunt with an ethnographer’s level of detail: "After a chase the Buffalo has fallen on his knees from exhaustion and loss of blood. The Indian's horse to the right has become restive & refuses to approach, while the horseman to the left, with a javelin or lance is about to give the coup de grace. The lance is from 7 to 10 feet long, neatly pointed with iron, secured by sinew tightly gound to the rod, and is a most effectual weapon in the practiced hands of the Indians;- they carry also their quivers slung from the shoulders in case of breakage of the former, or to be used in an emergancy where the bow and arrow would better answer their purposes. The chase of the Bison is attended with danger, for although in general shy, and flying from the face of man, yet when wounded they become furious, and make fight to the last; They use their hoofs with as much facility as their horns, and whatever opposes them runs no small risk of being trampled to death." (The West of Alfred Jacob Miller, 1837).
Mirroring the drama of Miller’s written description, his visual portrayal of the scene in The Buffalo Hunt heightens the intensity by drawing on his Academic and art historical training. Miller studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and spent the years prior to his trip West copying Old Master paintings in the Louvre and Vatican. In the present work, his sublime rendering of the Western landscape parallels the work of his Hudson River School contemporaries, such as Thomas Cole, in celebration of the untouched natural world. The regal poses of the Native Americans on their rearing horses draw from the tradition of Peter Paul Rubens, and more directly Eugene Delacroix and Theodore Gericault—particularly the Indian at right atop a white stallion, which looks more akin to an Arabian collected by European aristocracy than the typical Spanish mustangs of the American plains. Placing the Native American in this heroic pose atop a prized steed, Miller celebrates the dignity of the Indian way of life, further underscored by the elegant decoration of the figure’s clothing and jewelry.
The idealized reverence Miller demonstrates for the Native hunters is true as well for their target—the majestic buffalo. Up to sixty million buffalo once roamed North America, but by the time Alfred Jacob Miller first undertook his expedition to the West in 1837, the herds had already been extensively hunted. In 1855, Congress passed the first game law protecting the American Bison, but it was too little, too late; by 1870 the population shrunk to only eight million and, by 1883, just a few thousand. The buffalo in the present work is therefore not only a foil for the Indian hero, but also a mythic figure of its own. Miller’s painting harks back—even for the artist’s contemporary audience in the 1850s—to idyllic days of yore when the West remained wild and free from encroachment. In this way, The Buffalo Hunt is an earlier entry in the genre of Alert Bierstadt’s famed The Last of Buffalo (1888-89, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
Miller reimagined this same moment in the buffalo hunt in various other compositions over his career, with these related paintings now in institutional collections. A smaller oil on panel circa 1838-42 is in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. In 1839, Miller exhibited a pair of large-scale works entitled Hunting the Buffalo, which were destined for Stewart’s castle and inspired a critic of the time to proclaim them “nearly equal to anything we ever saw.” (as quoted in P. Hassrick, “Hunting the Buffalo,” The Alfred Jacob Miller Online Catalogue) One of the pair (now in the Joslyn Art Museum) features this vignette in the center foreground. Perhaps Miller’s final version of the scene was painted in watercolor circa 1867 and is in the Library and Archives of Canada.
Miller's combination of respectful recording of Native American lifestyles with his Romantic nostalgia created some of the earliest truly artistic renditions of the American West, surpassing his predecessors like Karl Bodmer and George Catlin. Miller’s works, including The Buffalo Hunt, have proven so powerful as to inform an entire notion of early Native Americans, and in the process, created an archetype of the inhabitants of the West that has carried on for generations.
In June 1837, Miller undertook his expedition to the West, departing St. Louis for the Green River, in present day Wyoming, in the company of Scottish nobleman Sir William Drummond Stewart. During his trip, Miller created over 150 preliminary sketches and watercolors, which he later used to create finished compositions in both watercolor and oil. Many were created in his studio on the grounds of Stewart’s ancestral home in Scotland. After Miller settled back in his native Baltimore in 1842, he found new patrons for his art among both the wealthy families of the city’s elite as well as the rising merchant class. The present work was originally acquired by Thomas Swann, President of B&O Railroad who was elected Mayor of Baltimore in 1856 and Governor of Maryland in 1864. At the same time Swann purchased the present work, he also acquired another painting known as Buffalo Hunt, which is now in the American Museum of Western Art in Denver.
In 1858, Miller created an annotated portfolio of 200 watercolors for William T. Walters, now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. The project included a scene closely related to the present work. The artist’s original text accompanying the composition describes this exciting culmination of the buffalo hunt with an ethnographer’s level of detail: "After a chase the Buffalo has fallen on his knees from exhaustion and loss of blood. The Indian's horse to the right has become restive & refuses to approach, while the horseman to the left, with a javelin or lance is about to give the coup de grace. The lance is from 7 to 10 feet long, neatly pointed with iron, secured by sinew tightly gound to the rod, and is a most effectual weapon in the practiced hands of the Indians;- they carry also their quivers slung from the shoulders in case of breakage of the former, or to be used in an emergancy where the bow and arrow would better answer their purposes. The chase of the Bison is attended with danger, for although in general shy, and flying from the face of man, yet when wounded they become furious, and make fight to the last; They use their hoofs with as much facility as their horns, and whatever opposes them runs no small risk of being trampled to death." (The West of Alfred Jacob Miller, 1837).
Mirroring the drama of Miller’s written description, his visual portrayal of the scene in The Buffalo Hunt heightens the intensity by drawing on his Academic and art historical training. Miller studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and spent the years prior to his trip West copying Old Master paintings in the Louvre and Vatican. In the present work, his sublime rendering of the Western landscape parallels the work of his Hudson River School contemporaries, such as Thomas Cole, in celebration of the untouched natural world. The regal poses of the Native Americans on their rearing horses draw from the tradition of Peter Paul Rubens, and more directly Eugene Delacroix and Theodore Gericault—particularly the Indian at right atop a white stallion, which looks more akin to an Arabian collected by European aristocracy than the typical Spanish mustangs of the American plains. Placing the Native American in this heroic pose atop a prized steed, Miller celebrates the dignity of the Indian way of life, further underscored by the elegant decoration of the figure’s clothing and jewelry.
The idealized reverence Miller demonstrates for the Native hunters is true as well for their target—the majestic buffalo. Up to sixty million buffalo once roamed North America, but by the time Alfred Jacob Miller first undertook his expedition to the West in 1837, the herds had already been extensively hunted. In 1855, Congress passed the first game law protecting the American Bison, but it was too little, too late; by 1870 the population shrunk to only eight million and, by 1883, just a few thousand. The buffalo in the present work is therefore not only a foil for the Indian hero, but also a mythic figure of its own. Miller’s painting harks back—even for the artist’s contemporary audience in the 1850s—to idyllic days of yore when the West remained wild and free from encroachment. In this way, The Buffalo Hunt is an earlier entry in the genre of Alert Bierstadt’s famed The Last of Buffalo (1888-89, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
Miller reimagined this same moment in the buffalo hunt in various other compositions over his career, with these related paintings now in institutional collections. A smaller oil on panel circa 1838-42 is in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. In 1839, Miller exhibited a pair of large-scale works entitled Hunting the Buffalo, which were destined for Stewart’s castle and inspired a critic of the time to proclaim them “nearly equal to anything we ever saw.” (as quoted in P. Hassrick, “Hunting the Buffalo,” The Alfred Jacob Miller Online Catalogue) One of the pair (now in the Joslyn Art Museum) features this vignette in the center foreground. Perhaps Miller’s final version of the scene was painted in watercolor circa 1867 and is in the Library and Archives of Canada.
Miller's combination of respectful recording of Native American lifestyles with his Romantic nostalgia created some of the earliest truly artistic renditions of the American West, surpassing his predecessors like Karl Bodmer and George Catlin. Miller’s works, including The Buffalo Hunt, have proven so powerful as to inform an entire notion of early Native Americans, and in the process, created an archetype of the inhabitants of the West that has carried on for generations.