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Artists of the Old West
Artists of the Old West by Ewers, John c.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1982
About the author
John C. Ewers
54 booksJohn Canfield Ewers was an American ethnologist and museum curator. Known for his studies on the art and history of the American Plains Indians, he was described by The New York Times as one of his country's "foremost interpreters of American Indian culture.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C....
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July 17, 2017
Tom found this at the library bookshelf in Worthington, he has a good eye! I think we paid $2 for this treasure. The title page includes a pasted in certificate that this copy is number 4238 of a limited edition of 5000 copies, and it is beautifully produced. I figured I might flip through it for fun, maybe, but when I did take a look, it turned out to be fascinating history of the Western US and biography of the artists that depicted it (as well as full of reproductions of wonderful works of art and illustration). So I read the whole thing, cover to cover, with great interest. While it was the history that held my interest, it was also fun to read the art-historical critiques of the various artists, and the changing views of their work.
It includes only a very few reproductions of artwork by Native Americans, so the book is by no means attempting to be comprehensive in that regard. It is really a book about the art produced by a couple of dozen European and European-Americans from their earliest explorations of the country beyond the Mississippi up to, and in some cases over, the Rocky Mountains, following the Louisiana Purchase until the "end of the frontier" in the 1890s (though some of the art was produced later, but depicted the old days). In several cases, the artists were motivated by the assumption that the Indians would be wiped out, and therefore they needed to make a record of them and their world while it still existed. Thankfully, the American Indians survived (despite all efforts to make sure they did not), but the early pictorial record is still important and impressive, as anyone who has seen the collection of Catlin's paintings in the Smithsonian will understand.
It includes only a very few reproductions of artwork by Native Americans, so the book is by no means attempting to be comprehensive in that regard. It is really a book about the art produced by a couple of dozen European and European-Americans from their earliest explorations of the country beyond the Mississippi up to, and in some cases over, the Rocky Mountains, following the Louisiana Purchase until the "end of the frontier" in the 1890s (though some of the art was produced later, but depicted the old days). In several cases, the artists were motivated by the assumption that the Indians would be wiped out, and therefore they needed to make a record of them and their world while it still existed. Thankfully, the American Indians survived (despite all efforts to make sure they did not), but the early pictorial record is still important and impressive, as anyone who has seen the collection of Catlin's paintings in the Smithsonian will understand.
Displaying 1 of 1 review