Karl Bodmer

Karl Bodmer made some of the most accurate images ever painted of Native Americans. His watercolours from the upper Missouri River, portraits of Mandan, Hidatsa, Assiniboine and Blackfeet people with their clothing, weapons and ornaments shown in careful detail, along with views of prairie and river bluffs, are a vital record of the West in the 1830s.

Born in Zurich in 1809, he was hired by the German explorer Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied as artist for his North American expedition of 1832 to 1834, which travelled up the Missouri as far as Fort McKenzie in present-day Montana and wintered at Fort Clark. His pictures became the 81 aquatints in Maximilian’s travel book. Back in Europe he settled in Barbizon, took French nationality and painted forest landscapes and animals with the Barbizon school. He died in Paris in 1893. The Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha holds the largest collection of his expedition work.

Dacota Woman and Assiniboin Girl shows his precise, respectful portraiture.