Permanent Collection
Art of Native North America
The Native American Collection includes the incomparable Alfred I. Barton Collection of Southwest Indian Art, which boasts some of the finest Pueblo, Navajo, and Rio Grande textiles in the South. The Barton Collection was greatly enhanced through a 1956 exchange with the Denver Art Museum, at which time the Lowe received complementary material in the areas of ceramics, beadwork, sculpture, and basketry.
Washington Allston, United States, 1779-1843
Jason Returning to Demand His Father's Kingdom
oil and chalk on canvas, 168 x 240"
Washington Allston is a seminal figure in the development of American art after the American Revolution. Although he favored neoclassicism while studying art abroad after his graduation from Harvard, he abandoned such influences upon returning to the United States. America's first Romantic artist, he explored a broad range of subject matter, from landscape to portraiture. The subject matter of the museum’s painting derives from Allston's knowledge of classical sources, as well as a series of designs on the same subject made by Jakob Asmus Carstens.
 |
Charles Bird King, United States, 1785-1862
Portrait of Julcee Mathla, A Seminole Chief, 1826
oil on canvas, 16 1/2 x 13 1/2"
Museum purchase, 71.007.000
Although Charles Bird King never visited a Native American village, he painted more portraits from life of North American Indians than almost any other artist of his time. Living and working in Washington, DC, he was able to capture the likeness of members of the various delegations of tribes who visited the Capitol during a period of government negotiation of Native American lands and rights.
While he was never renowned for great technical achievement, King received critical attention for faithfully recording physical features and tribal costumes. His skill as a sensitive portraitist is evident in this dignified and fascinating portrait of the Seminole chief Julcee Mathla. Although a large number of King's original paintings were destroyed in an 1865 fire that ravaged the Smithsonian Institution's art collection, many survive in his own replicas as well as through painted copies and lithographs made by other artists after King's originals. |
|
 |
Rembrandt Peale, United States, 1778-1860
Peter Paul Rubens, Flanders, 1577-1640
General View of Niagara Falls,
ca. 1831
oil on linen, 18 1/4 x 24"
Gift of Allan Gerdau, 56.103.000
Painted during the Romantic period of American art, which saw an increased interest in native landscape and scenery, Peale’s General View of Niagara Falls is one of five views painted in the autumn of 1831. By this time, the Falls had become a major tourist attraction and a popular subject for artists. Peale, always ambitious, was well aware of the importance of Niagara Falls as a symbol of the country’s majesty, advanced through contemporary literature and engravings.
He clearly hoped to capitalize on the popularity of the Falls; however, not one of the five paintings was ever sold. Following the Niagara studies, Peale all but abandoned landscape as a genre, concentrating on portraiture, for which he achieved his greatest fame. The oldest son in a family of painters, Peale remains a seminal figure in the development of a fresh nineteenth-century American aesthetic.
|
|
