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Source Description

Extracts from Alfred Jacob Miller’s original text, which accompanied his images of Native Americans, are included below for reference. These words, which shaped how Miller’s contemporaries viewed the watercolors, reveal the racism and sexism embedded in 19th-century exploration and colonization of the western part of what is today the United States." A chief of the Kansas. These have become poor and reduced in numbers. The Buffalo on which they depended for their food having long ago migrated West, leaving them but a sparse supply of deer, wild turkeys, and prairie-hens to subsist on" A.J. Miller, extracted from "The West of Alfred Jacob Miller" (1837).In July 1858 William T. Walters commissioned 200 watercolors at twelve dollars apiece from Baltimore born artist Alfred Jacob Miller. These paintings were each accompanied by a descriptive text, and were delivered in installments over the next twenty-one months and ultimately were bound in three albums. Transcriptions of field-sketches drawn during the 1837 expedition that Miller had undertaken to the annual fur-trader's rendezvous in the Green River Valley (in what is now western Wyoming), these watercolors are a unique record of the closing years of the western fur trade.

Scholar Source Context

Document identity
localId
18986
label
White Plume
core
obj
dtoType
drawing
pageCount
3
Source metadata
id
18986
contentType
drawing
stage
normalized
title
White Plume
description
Extracts from Alfred Jacob Miller’s original text, which accompanied his images of Native Americans, are included below for reference. These words, which shaped how Miller’s contemporaries viewed the watercolors, reveal the racism and sexism embedded in 19th-century exploration and colonization of the western part of what is today the United States." A chief of the Kansas. These have become poor and reduced in numbers. The Buffalo on which they depended for their food having long ago migrated West, leaving them but a sparse supply of deer, wild turkeys, and prairie-hens to subsist on" A.J. Miller, extracted from "The West of Alfred Jacob Miller" (1837).In July 1858 William T. Walters commissioned 200 watercolors at twelve dollars apiece from Baltimore born artist Alfred Jacob Miller. These paintings were each accompanied by a descriptive text, and were delivered in installments over the next twenty-one months and ultimately were bound in three albums. Transcriptions of field-sketches drawn during the 1837 expedition that Miller had undertaken to the annual fur-trader's rendezvous in the Green River Valley (in what is now western Wyoming), these watercolors are a unique record of the closing years of the western fur trade.
provenance
William T. Walters, Baltimore, 1858-1860, by commission; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1894, by inheritance; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.
date
1858-1860
rightsUri
CC0
language
en
genreSpecific
Painting & Drawing
watercolors (paintings)
imageCount
3
pageCount
3
source
import
dimensions
units
cm
width
30.6
height
23.8
dimensionsRaw
H: 12 1/16 x W: 9 3/8 in. (30.6 x 23.8 cm)
Source extras
inscriptions
[Monogram] Lower right: AJMiller; [Number] Lower right: 46
med
watercolor heightened with white on paper
creator_ids
4486
collection_ids
EAN
exhibition_ids
2165
2167
3300
Page inventory
seq
1
type
photo
mediaId
e1cbedc530df4f93
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no
seq
2
type
photo
mediaId
4477d16fb72d0305
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no
seq
3
type
photo
mediaId
c1e10ffb7172f097
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no