TIMES OF THE GREAT BUFFALO HUNTS Alfred Jacob Miller 1810-1874

TIMES OF THE GREAT BUFFALO HUNTS

Alfred Jacob Miller 1810-1874

The Artist:

Among the artists who first recorded the American West the most important are George Catlin, Karl Bodmer, and Alfred Jacob Miller. Of this group, Catlin and Bodmer were motivated primarily to produce a historical and ethnographic record and were imbued with an essentially scientific point of view. Miller is a different matter. To compare him with Catlin and Bodmer is to juxtapose passionate sincerity, professional objectivity, and romantic poetry, which, in all fairness, are hardly comparable.

Miller was trained in Paris and Rome in portrait, landscape, and marine painting as well as that most romantic of themes, the painting of history. He worked in the same milieu as Eugene Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner. His own work came under the critical scrutiny of the poet Baudelaire. And when his great opportunity came to accompany the wealthy Scottish traveler Sir William Drummond Stewart on a tour of the trans-Mississippi West, he was assigned to record, not the facts of ethnography, but a dramatic adventure into an exotic world.

If we regard the paintings of Catlin and Bodmer as exciting early views by white people of the Indian cultures, we are enthralled by facts of customs, costume, and physiognomy, the look of things before they changed forever. This view of their work is primary. Their intrinsic qualities as painters are apt to be secondary. Catlin is the inspired primitive, Bodmer the academic realist.

Miller is the romantic painter, idealistic, enthusiastic, and emotionally committed to the reality depicted. In his painting the qualities of the medium, the ink and wash of the sketches made on the spot, the watercolor of the developed compositions, even the oils of the works completed after the fact are all exploited to the full. The drawings and watercolors are spontaneous and suggestive and convey a strong impression of immediacy. The use of European conventions in composition is evident at times, but it is fascinating to see these new experiences expressed within the tradition.

Finally, if it were not for the existence of an ink and wash drawing of the subject of The Halt, it would be tempting to see the painting as an entirely invented image.1 Its translation has, in effect, changed it from a record of reality to the statement of an ideal.

Miller was born in Baltimore. He studied portraiture with Thomas Sully from 1831-32. In 1833 he went to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and later at the English Life School in Rome. Upon his return he opened a portrait studio in Baltimore but was unsuccessful. In 1837 he moved to New Orleans where he was selected by Capt. William Drummond Stewart as artist to record a journey to the Rocky Mountains. The expedition journeyed by wagon along what was to become the oregon Trail. Miller sketched the Native American along the way and also recorded the rendezvous of the mountain men in what is now southwestern Wyoming. Miller returned to Saint Louis with about 166 sketches which were later developed into oil paintings while in New Orleans and Baltimore. From 1840 to 1842 he lived in Stewart's Murthly Castle in Scotland, Painting oils as decorations depicting favorite episodes from the trip. He also delivered a portfolio of 83 small drawings and watercolors. Miller spent the rest of his life in Baltimore painting portraits and making copies of his Western themes.

One of the best known paintings in Joslyn's extensive Miller collection, The Trapper's Bride represents an American Fur Company trapper taking a wife. Miller painted several versions of this subject, one of which is in the Walters Art Gallery in the artist's home town. About this incident the artist later wrote:

The price of acquisition in this case was $600 paid for in the legal tender of the region: viz.: Guns, $100 each, Blankets $40 each, Red Flannel $20 pr yard, Alcohol $64 pr. Gal., Tobacco, Beads etc. at corresponding rates. A Free Trapper is a most desirable match, but it is conceded that he is a ruined man after such an investment.... The poor devil trapper sells himself, body and soul, to the Fur Company for a number of years. He traps beaver, hunts the Buffalo and bear, Elk, etc. The furs and robes of which the Company credits to his account. - David C. Hunt

Fort Laramie, 1845

Ft. Laramie has in its history four incarnations: (a) a cottonwood stockade constructed at Laramie's Point, but named by Wm. Sublette "Fort William", 1837 painting by Alfred Jacob Miller below left, interior view by Miller below right; (b) an adobe fort depicted in the engraving above and at the bottom of the page; (c) a military post, see photo toward bottom of page; and (d) finally its present configuration consisting of a mix of restoration to the fort's 1880's appearance and ruins. The fort served as a terminus of the "Trappers' Trail running from Taos northward. The Trappers Trail fell into disusage when fashions changed and silk replaced beaver in hats. In 1841,the stockade was replaced by an adobe structure depicted in the engraving above and as described by Francis Parkman below. While generally referred to by fort employees as "Fort Laramie," it was named Fort John, after John Sarpy, a partner in the American Fur Company and maintained its importance on the Oregon Trail and Mormon Trail. It was also a terminus for the 300 mile-long Fort Pierre-Fort Laramie Trail. Government freighters continued to use the trail to Fort Pierre until the 1880's.

Miller, a professional artist trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, but originally from Baltimore, accompanied the Scottish adventurer Captain Sir William Drummond Stewart on his trip to the 1837 Rendevous discussed with regard to Ft. Bridger. On the trip Miller not only provided the first accurate description of a rendevous, but made a number of pencil sketches, including one of Bridger, featured on the next page, depicting Bridger, drunk, riding around the rendevous grounds in a replica suit of armor given to Bridger by Sir William. Upon his return to the East, Miller used some of the sketches to make a number of oil paintings of Nebraska and Wyoming. Additionally, Miller gave a description of the fort as being: of a quadrangular form, with block houses at diagonal corners to sweep the fronts in case of attack. Over the front entrance is a large blockhouse in which is placed a cannon. The interior of the fort is about 150 feet square, surrounded by small cabins whose roofs reach within 3 feet of the top of the palisades against which they abut. The Indians encamp in great numbers here 3 or 4 times a year, bringing peltries to be exchanged for dry goods, tobacco, beads and alcohol. The Indians have a mortal horror of the "big gun" which rests in the blockhouse, as they have had experience of its prowess and witnessed the havoc produced by its loud "talk". They conceive it to be only asleep and have a wholesome dread of its being waked up.