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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 principal lodge, says Miller, is sixty to seventy feet in diameter with a domelike roof perhaps forty feet high in the center. The only light comes through a six-foot aperture at the top, which also permits the smoke to escape. Miller compared the whole effect to the Pantheon at Rome. 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
9725
label
Indian Lodges
core
obj
dtoType
drawing
pageCount
2
Source metadata
id
9725
contentType
drawing
stage
normalized
title
Indian Lodges
description
Extracts from Alfred Jacob Miller’s original text, which accompanied his images of Native Americans, are included below for reference. The principal lodge, says Miller, is sixty to seventy feet in diameter with a domelike roof perhaps forty feet high in the center. The only light comes through a six-foot aperture at the top, which also permits the smoke to escape. Miller compared the whole effect to the Pantheon at Rome. 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
2
pageCount
2
source
import
dimensions
units
cm
width
22.8
height
36.4
dimensionsRaw
H: 9 x W: 14 5/16 in. (22.8 x 36.4 cm)
Source extras
med
watercolor on paper
creator_ids
4486
collection_ids
EAN
exhibition_ids
2156
2164
2165
2167
Page inventory
seq
1
type
photo
mediaId
27f31c9eff934f77
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no
seq
2
type
photo
mediaId
32db15d472f0e26c
hasOcr
no
hasDescription
no