The Coming of the White Man

Details

JOSHUA SHAW (1776-1861)
The Coming of the White Man
signed and dated '1850. J. Shaw.' (lower left)
oil on canvas
25 x 36 in. (63.5 x 91.4 cm.)
Painted in 1850.

Provenance

Elisabeth Waldo-Dentzel, Northridge, California, by 1991.
Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Literature

J.G. Sweeney, Masterpieces of Western American Art, New York, 1991, pp. 6, 16, illustrated.

Exhibited

Washington, D.C., National Museum of American Art, The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820-1920, March 15-July 7, 1991, pp. 73-76, no. 5, fig. 63, illustrated.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

The English-born Joshua Shaw immigrated to the United States in 1817 at the recommendation of prominent American expatriate artist Benjamin West. Shaw became one of America's earliest landscape painters, frequently depicting the arrival of the first white settlers in the new world in works such as the present example. Artists of the period commonly produced variations on this theme as part of the mid-19th century demand for romanticized depictions of interactions between Native Americans and settlers.

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