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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."The sketch will give you some idea of a band of wild horses engaged in their rough amusement and frolicsome pastime of biting and kicking, while some are rearing and striking with their fore-feet. The popular idea that they have sentinels posted to give an alarm must have arisen from the circumstance of the stallions feeding apart at some distance from the main band. Being thus isolated they take in a wider range than the mares huddled and feeding together. Their hot and fiery blood causes them to take alarm at the slightest movement,- so that when they start a general stampede takes place, and in a very few minutes the prairie is bare and not one of them is to be seen." 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
33820
label
Wild Horses
core
obj
dtoType
drawing
citationUrl
pageCount
3
Source metadata
id
33820
contentType
drawing
stage
normalized
title
Wild Horses
description
Extracts from Alfred Jacob Miller’s original text, which accompanied his images of Native Americans, are included below for reference."The sketch will give you some idea of a band of wild horses engaged in their rough amusement and frolicsome pastime of biting and kicking, while some are rearing and striking with their fore-feet. The popular idea that they have sentinels posted to give an alarm must have arisen from the circumstance of the stallions feeding apart at some distance from the main band. Being thus isolated they take in a wider range than the mares huddled and feeding together. Their hot and fiery blood causes them to take alarm at the slightest movement,- so that when they start a general stampede takes place, and in a very few minutes the prairie is bare and not one of them is to be seen." 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
citationUrl
rightsUri
CC0
language
en
genreSpecific
Painting & Drawing
watercolors (paintings)
imageCount
3
pageCount
3
source
import
dimensions
units
cm
width
37
height
24
dimensionsRaw
H: 14 9/16 x W: 9 7/16 in. (37 x 24 cm)
Source extras
med
watercolor on paper
creator_ids
4486
collection_ids
EAN
exhibition_ids
2165
Page inventory
seq
1
type
photo
mediaId
32b5498f9cb5c4bd
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no
seq
2
type
photo
mediaId
0e6128b877f013c2
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no
seq
3
type
photo
mediaId
e61deb6381575905
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no