Charles Deas

Charles Deas painted the American frontier of the 1840s: trappers, voyageurs and Native Americans, often in moments of danger or flight. His pictures have a charged, dramatic feel, with figures on horseback at the edge of cliffs or rivers and wild western landscapes around them.

He was born in Philadelphia in 1818 and by 1841 had settled in St. Louis, then the gateway to the West. From there he travelled and painted the people of the frontier. His Long Jakes of 1844, a mountain man on horseback, is in the Denver Art Museum, The Death Struggle is in the Shelburne Museum and The Voyageurs is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He returned to New York in 1848 and did not paint much afterwards. He died there in 1867.

A Solitary Indian Seated on the Edge of a Bold Precipice is typical of his dramatic settings.