
Ingmars Lindbergs
Director
Sold for US$1,920 inc. premium
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Provenance
ex-Brant Mackley Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
The Euro-American artworks referenced in this composition include "The Landing of Christopher Columbus," an 1847 painting by John Vanderlyn seen in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, positioned center bottom on the hide. While the postures and placement of the major participants are the same in both depictions, the artist chose to show Columbus' men carrying American flags and two of them wearing U.S. Cavalry breeches. The panel immediately above depicts European and Native men gathered for trade while a woman and child sit off to one side, reminiscent of Benjamin West's 1772 painting "The Treaty of Penn with the Indians." Other scenes are less immediately identifiable as to their origin but may very well have been derived from illustrations frequenting textbooks and other publications of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, alongside the more traditional depictions of animals and a rider on horseback with distinctive upswept coiffure of a Apsáalooke (Crow) warrior. At the upper right an enigmatic bird with bright plumage appears to tear at a book or document titled "America."