American Indians in British Art, 1700-1840

Portada
University of Oklahoma Press, 2005 - 198 páginas

Ask anyone the world over to identify a figure in buckskins with a feather bonnet, and the answer will be “Indian.” Many works of art produced by non-Native artists have reflected such a limited viewpoint. In American Indians in British Art, 1700–1840, Stephanie Pratt explores for the first time an artistic tradition that avoided simplification and that instead portrayed Native peoples in a surprisingly complex light.

During the eighteenth century, the British allied themselves with Indian tribes to counter the American colonial rebellion. In response, British artists produced a large volume of work focusing on American Indians. Although these works depicted their subjects as either noble or ignoble savages, they also represented Indians as active participants in contemporary society.

Pratt places artistic works in historical context and traces a movement away from abstraction, where Indians were symbols rather than actual people, to representational art, which portrayed Indians as actors on the colonial stage. But Pratt also argues that to view these images as mere illustrations of historical events or individuals would be reductive. As works of art they contain formal characteristics and ideological content that diminish their documentary value.

 

Contenido

List of Illustrations vii
3
Color Plates
25
Warfare Diplomacy and Visual Representation ca 17001760
30
Cunneshote Francis Parsons 1762
53
Scyacust Ukah Joshua Reynolds 1762
65
Benjamin West
70
The Death of Jane MacCrea John Vanderlyn 18034
88
The British and American
91
Travel Observation and the Pathos of Decline
113
Conclusion
149
Bibliography
181
Derechos de autor

Otras ediciones - Ver todas

Términos y frases comunes

Referencias a este libro

Acerca del autor (2005)

Stephanie Pratt is Senior Lecturer in the History of Art at the University of Plymouth, Devon, United Kingdom.

Información bibliográfica