Object Record
Images
Metadata
Title |
Buffalo Hunt |
Place of Origin |
North American Plains |
Artist or Maker |
Rindisbacher, Peter (1806-1834) |
Date |
c. 1830 |
Materials |
Watercolor on Paper |
Dimension Details |
Height: 17 3/4" Width: 30 13/16" |
Description |
In this view of a buffalo hunt, armed Native Americans on horseback are shown racing across the rolling grassland of the plains under a cloudy sky. In the left foreground, one hunter is aiming his bow and arrow at close range at a buffalo that has already been wounded. Other figures in various stages of the hunt and the rest of the stampeding buffalo herd are in the distance on the right. The hunters are clad in fringed buckskin and have feathers in their hair. Peter Rindisbacher was born in Switzerland and immigrated at the age of 15 with his parents to Canada in 1821, and subsequently to Wisconsin. Despite little formal training, Rindisbacher displayed a distinct talent for drawing as he captured the events, people, and wildlife he encountered in his new environment. Many of these drawings were later copied by the artist into watercolor. He began to receive commissions for his detailed, realistic scenes, and six of his watercolors were published in England as colored lithographs under the title "Views of Hudson's Bay." In 1829 he moved to St. Louis where he began to professionally paint portrait miniatures and contributed illustrations to "The American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine" published in Baltimore. "Buffalo Hunt" is one of Rindisbacher's most famous scenes, and was used as the frontispiece to Volume II of McKenney and Hall's "History of the Indian Tribes of North America" (Philadelphia, 1837). |
Provenance |
Gift from the artist in St. Louis, Missouri to Benjamin West Tingley of Philadlephia, Pennsylvania Descended in the Tingley family until the 20th century Kennedy Galleries, New York, New York Sold to The Dietrich American Foundation, 1968 |
Object Name |
Watercolor |
Object ID |
7.8.440 |
Search Terms |
paintings |