Piegan Blackfeet Camp

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Artist

Karl Bodmer

Birth and death dates

1809 - 1893

Artist Nationality

Swiss

Title

Piegan Blackfeet Camp

Date

August or September 1833

Dimensions

10 7/8 × 17 in. (27.6 × 43.2 cm)

Medium

Graphite on paper

Institution

Joslyn Art Museum

Credit Line

Gift of the Enron Art Foundation

Accession Number

1986.49.211.b

Rights (i.e. copyright information)

Joslyn Art Museum

Photographer credit

Photograph © Bruce M. White, 2019

Commentary

A watercolor rendering of Fort McKenzie is on the reverse of this pencil sketch of a Piegan camp. Presumably both were done in August or September of 1833. The numbers of people gathered at the fort to trade were impressively large: 800 Blackfeet warriors greeted the arrival of Maximilian's keelboat. The camps there were correspondingly large and full of activity. Tableau 43 of the aquatint atlas is based on this initial sketch, with dozens of human figure, dogs, and horses added to the foreground to convey the noisy bustle of camp life. As John C. Ewers has pointed out, this scene is a fine example of Bodmer's careful attention to details often missed by other artists, such as the varying sizes of the tipis, which reflected variation in family sizes and wealth.

Labels:

structure

Approximate Depicted Location:

Blackfeet Camp near Ft. MacKenzie, Montana