#5 Chrysler Treasures - The Wounded Indian Traditional Cache
#5 Chrysler Treasures - The Wounded Indian
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Fifth in a series of caches highlighting the art of Norfolk's Chrysler Museum, One Memorial Place, Norfolk, VA 23510. The Chrysler Museum is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm, Sunday from Noon to 5 pm. Admission is Free. Website: www.chrysler.org. This sculpture may be seen in Gallery 212 at the museum.
Peter Stephenson’s marble sculpture (c. 1860) depicts a wounded Indian kneeling on the ground with one leg extended, holding an arrow that is embedded in his other leg. It inspires sympathy for an ill-fated warrior. The bleeding gash in his torso, caused by the arrow nearby, suggests conflict with a rival tribe. Yet many have assumed his tragic demise is a consequence of white settlers’ lust for wealth, and Native Americans’ failure to conform to “civilized” customs. Works like this acknowledged that the frontier had long been home to Native Americans.
A precocious, self-taught talent, Stephenson first achieved prominence in Boston in the late 1840's. He exhibited classically inspired sculpture at the Boston Atheneum on a return from Italy, and created several Native American subjects in addition to The Wounded Indian. However this is his signature piece, and first major work. The figure was displayed at the Atheneum from 1852 to 1856 and remained in Boston until it entered the collection of James Ricau in the 1960's. Stephenson's career was brief, ending with madness and death at age 37.
The Wounded Indian may be the most beautiful and affecting work in the Chrysler's Ricau collection of American neoclassical sculpture. Apart from its historical significance, this life-size figure of a dying warrior embodies grace and; dignity, and evokes empathy and a sense of loss.
Of unmatched importance as an icon of American culture, the representation of Native Americans has been both rich and contradictory. From the 1820s to 1840s artist Thomas Cole used Native Americans as romantic, poetic symbols of a lost past, while others stressed ethnographic accuracy. Charles Bird King's famous portraits of Native Americans are considered the most complete expression of the idea of the Noble Savage in American art: King's contemporaries compared his sitters to ancient Romans, citing their nobility, intelligence and character. Concurrent with Western expansion, what some historians call "the myth of the vanishing Indian" developed as an extension of Manifest Destiny. This racially based theory held that once Native Americans were exposed to European culture their extinction was inevitable. As a "primitive" people they were doomed. This myth was easily assimilated into 19th-century art and literature. In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 poem "The Song of Hiawatha", the Indians, weakened and quarreling, are scattered westward, and after blessing the arrival of the white men, Hiawatha paddles peacefully into the hereafter.
By the mid-1850s, these sentiments had become established in painting & sculpture. In landscape painting, the Indian appeared on a promontory overlooking a cultivated, urbanizing landscape. In sculpture, a chieftain or warrior, based loosely on the classical Dying Gaul, stoically met death. Stephenson's "The Wounded Indian" was exhibited at the Crystal Palace Exposition in London in 1851.
Other caches in this series include:
Other caches in this series include:
Chrysler Treasures #1 - The Norfolk Mace (GC7C965) Located in Gallery 208
Chrysler Treasures # 3 - Angel Appearing to Shepherds (GC7EC96) Located in Gallery 211
Chrysler Treasures # 4 - The Neophyte (GC7ECR7) Located in Gallery 214
Chrysler Treasures # 5 - The Wounded Indian (GC7EMPZ) (No longer at the Chrysler)
Chrysler Treasures # 6 - Picasso (redux) (GCA6RA1) Located in Gallery 219
Chrysler Treasures # 9 - Veronese (GC7EYA3) Located in Gallery 204
Chrysler Treasures #10 - The Last Judgement (GC7EYE5) Located in Gallery 202
Chrysler Treasures #11 - The Vegetable Vendor (GC7EZM5) Located in Gallery 207
Chrysler Treasures #12 - James Baldwin (GC7F3HN) Located in Gallery 222
Chrysler Treasures #13 - Ganymede and the Eagle (redux) (GCARWVG) Located in Gallery 208
Chrysler Treasures #14 - Renoir (GC7F3PJ) Located in Gallery 217
Chrysler Treasures #15 - Samurai Armor (GC7F6M8) Located in Gallery 106
Chrysler Treasures #16 - Tiffany Glass (GC7F5WY) Located in Gallery 116
Chrysler Treasures #18 - Naga Buddha (redux) (GC8A8PE) Located in Gallery 107
Chrysler Treasures #19 - Sarcophagus (redux) (GC8A8X8) Located in Gallery 109
Chrysler Treasures #20 - Georgia O'Keefe(redux) (8TNNX) (located in Gallery 223
Chrysler Treasures # 21 - Libenksy and Brychtova (GC7QFM0) Located in Gallery 223
Chrysler Treasures # 22 - Abstract Expressionism (GC7QG86) Located in Gallery 223
Chrysler Treasures # 23 - Hamlet Robot (GC7QG8E) Located in Gallery 223 (now in storeage)
Chrysler Treasures # 25 - Bernini's Bust of Christ (GC8RZB5) in Gallery 205
Chrysler Treasures # 26 - MacPherson and MacDonald (GC8ZXF5) in Gallery 218
Chrysler Treasures # 27 - Karen Lamonte (GC8ZY3Q) in Gallery 108
Chrysler Treasures # 28 - Amor Forgiven (GC90M9V) in Galley 216
Chrysler Treasures # 29 - Standing Warrior (GC90VFT) in Gallery 105
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