Stark Museum of Art
Orange, Texas
409-883-6661
http://www.starkmuseum.org/
Paul Kane (1810-1871)
Now on exhibit at the Stark Museum
of Art through May 2000 is a selection of Paul Kane original studies in
oil from the museum's permanent collection. Featured are landscapes, portraits,
and scenes of tribal life that Paul Kane encountered as he traveled across
North America from the Great Lakes to the Pacific between 1845-1848. Some
examples on display include "Assiniboin Indians Hunting Buffalo,"
"Encampment, Winnipeg," "The Mills of Oregon City,"
"Wigwam," and "Medicine Pipe Stem Dance."
Paul
Kane (1810-1871) was born in Ireland and grew up in Toronto, Canada. He
later moved to Detroit, Michigan where he worked as a portrait painter before
he sailed for Europe in 1841. While visiting in London, he saw an exhibition
of George Catlin's paintings which showed the native tribes in the west
facing radical cultural change. Kane was so inspired that he resolved to
undertake his own expedition into the American West to depict the people
and events of that time before the Indian frontier vanished. (left:
Assiniboin Indians Running a Buffalo, oil on canvas, 18 x 29 inches,
Stark Museum of Art, 31.78/231)
Returning to Canada in 1845, Kane secured the official
support of the Hudson's Bay Company to travel westward by way of the company's
system of trading posts. Accompanying a brigade of riverboats through the
Great Lakes, he continued overland from Sault Sainte Marie to the Pacific
coast, arriving at Fort Vancouver, 
British Columbia in December, 1846. Back in Toronto
in the fall of 1848, Kane set to work producing over 100 large paintings
of western subjects, many of which may be seen today at the Royal Ontario
Museum. More than 200 of Kane's original studies in oil and watercolor are
now owned by the Stark Museum of Art, along with his field notebooks or
sketchbooks and the hand-written journal he kept during his travels.
(right: Medicine Pipe Stem Dance, oil on paper, 9 3/4 x 12 1/4 inches,
Stark Museum of Art, 31.78/148, POP 10)
Kane's journal served as the basis for the published narrative
in Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America, which
first appeared in London in 1859. Kane died in Toronto twelve years later.
His reputation as a pioneering western artist was securely established.
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Paul
Kane (1810-1871) was born in Ireland and grew up in Toronto, Canada. He
later moved to Detroit, Michigan where he worked as a portrait painter before
he sailed for Europe in 1841. While visiting in London, he saw an exhibition
of George Catlin's paintings which showed the native tribes in the west
facing radical cultural change. Kane was so inspired that he resolved to
undertake his own expedition into the American West to depict the people
and events of that time before the Indian frontier vanished. (left:
Assiniboin Indians Running a Buffalo, oil on canvas, 18 x 29 inches,
Stark Museum of Art, 31.78/231)