George de Forest Brush (1854/1855–1941) created an important series of paintings of American Indians that was much celebrated in his time but has been seen rarely since. Brush combined extraordinary technical skills acquired during several years of training in the studio of Jean-Léon Gérôme with firsthand experience living among the Arapahoe, Shoshone, and Crow Indians in Wyoming and Montana. When he returned east, he produced a number of studio paintings in which the Indian served as metaphor. Completed during the 1880s, many of these works were quickly acquired by major American collectors and have remained in private hands through several generations. New research reveals that these stunningly beautiful paintings are also, surprisingly, complex meditations on the advent of modernism.
This beautiful book, the first scholarly study of Brush’s Indian paintings, features detailed discussions of individual paintings, interpretative essays exploring the historical and cultural context in which the paintings were produced, a comprehensive chronology, and lavish color reproductions of numerous paintings not shown publicly since the nineteenth century.
224 pages, 110 color, 25 b+w | 11 x 10 inches
