Karl Bodmer (French Charles Bodmer) (1809 - 1893) (8 works) (7 part)

7 August 2012

5 187

Travels in the interior of North America / by Maximilian, Prince of Wied ; with numerous engravings on wood, and a large map ; translated from the German, by H. Evans Lloyd.
Author:
Wied, Maximilian, Prinz von, 1782-1867
Published:
London : Ackermann and Co., 1843-1844

From 1832 to 1834 Swiss artist Karl Bodmer (1809-1893) accompanied the Prussian naturalist Alexander Philipp Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuwied, to America as illustrator on an expedition to the upper Missouri River country. The expedition was an unprecedented scientific endeavor to record in detail the landscape, natural history, and aboriginal life of the American wilderness frontier. Maximilian engaged Bodmer to provide a visual record of his investigations, which were principally focused upon the Plains Indians. The expedition went as far as Fort McKenzie, Montana, the western-most outpost of the American Fur Company. Soon after their arrival there, Bodmer and Maximilian witnessed a battle between encamped Blackfeet and an attack force of Assiniboin and Cree, involving hundreds of warriors. Having received reports of other hostilities in the area, it became clear to the travelers that their intention to continue on to the Rocky Mountains was far too dangerous.

In November 1833, after completing the onerous flatboat ride downstream from Fort McKenzie in present-day Montana, MaximilianХs party returned to Fort Clark in North Dakota to spend the winter in the heart of Mandan country. For both the prince and the artist Karl Bodmer, “this was unquestionably the most significant and productive phase of the expedition,” notes William Orr. “Here the German scientist began diligent observations . . . of a tribe which, four years later, was reduced to virtual extinction by smallpox. . . And here the Swiss painter created, in the most trying of circumstances, the most consummate and memorable paintings in an already luminous gallery of Indian portraits.”

Going beyond the precedent set by Thomas McKenney and George Catlin, Bodmer painted the people and places of frontier America with sensitivity to individual character and an accuracy of ethnographic detail that is considered unsurpassed.

Karl Bodmer, German Karl Bodmer, after naturalization in France - Charles Bodmer, French. Charles Bodmer (February 6, 1809, Zurich, Switzerland - October 30, 1893) was a Swiss artist whose paintings are dedicated to the Wild West of the United States, in particular, the life of the Indians. Accompanied the German traveler Prince Maximilian Wied-Neuwied in 1833-1834. on his expedition along the Missouri River. Sailing from St. Louis in April 1833 on the steamship Yellowstone, they visited many forts along the Missouri. Bodmer made many sketches and watercolors of various tribes, including the Omaha, Sioux, Ponca, Mandan, Arikara, Hidatsa, Assiniboine, Blackfeet, Crow, Gros Ventre, Cree, and Missouri. They returned to St. Louis in May 1834. Bodmer spent the remaining years of his life in France.