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Charles Wimar's The Abduction of Daniel Boone's Daughter by the Indians, 1853 and 1855: Evolving Myths

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Martha Levy Luft
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Extract

The two versions of The Abduction of Daniel Boone's Daughter by the Indians by Charles Wimar (1828–62) reveal a remarkable alteration in conception in the span of only two years. The earlier version (Fig. 1), painted in 1853, is a rather unimaginative picture rooted in an overworked tradition. In 1855 Wimar produced a much more original painting (Fig. 2), which reflected an enlightened approach to the myths of the American West. Although the two works were painted while Wimar was studying at the Düsseldorf Academy, he gained his knowledge of Indians from firsthand experience while growing up in the frontier city of Saint Louis, to which he had emigrated from Germany at the age of fifteen. Wimar devoted the bulk of his oeuvre to Indian subjects, mostly portraits and genre scenes. A narrative subject dealing with a specific and, by that time, legendary figure such as Daniel Boone's daughter was atypical for Wimar. By probing the background and sources of this theme, both literary and pictorial, one can bring to light the aspects of frontier mythology embodied in these paintings.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 7 , October 1982 , pp. 301 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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References

NOTES

1. There is a smaller version in oil of the 1855 painting in the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, Fort Worth, Texas. There is also a full-size version in oil of the 1855 painting that was formerly attributed to Wimar but is now considered a copy after his work. This copy is in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

2. Rathbone, Perry T., “Charles Wimar: Painter of the Indian Frontier,” Bulletin City Art Museum of St. Louis, 31, Nos. 2–3 (07–10 1946), 9.Google Scholar

3. Filson, John, The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucky … Also Col. Daniel Boon's Narrative of the Wars of Kentucky (London: John Stockdale, 1793), p. 39.Google Scholar

4. Bryan, Daniel, The Mountain Muse: Comprising the Adventures of Daniel Boone; and the Power of Virtuous and Refined Beauty (Harrisonburg, Va.: Davidson & Bourne, 1813), p. 164.Google Scholar

5. The companion piece to The Mountain Muse, published in the same volume and called The Power of Virtuous and Refined Beauty, attests to Bryan's deep interest in the capture theme. The poem tells the story of two queens in ancient times who were captured but triumphed over their captors in different ways.

6. Slotkin, Richard, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), p. 95.Google Scholar

7. See Pearce, Roy Harvey, “The Significance of the Captivity Narrative,” American Literature, 19 (1947–1948), 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. It is interesting to note the similarity between this scene and the one in The Mountain Muse mentioned above.

9. This book was first printed in 1833, but I have been unable to locate a firstedition copy Therefore, I do not know if the illustration was included in 1833.

10. Edgerton, Samuel Y. Jr., “The Murder of Jane McCrea: The Tragedy of an American Tableau d'Historie,” Art Bulletin, 47, No. 4, 481–92.Google Scholar

11. One of Wimar's earliest works, The Captive Maid (ca. 1840–1843)Google Scholar, attests to his penchant for the captive theme. Mrs. Barton Wagner of Farmington, Missouri, informed me that she sold this painting to Martin Kodner of Saint Louis. I have been unable to obtain a reproduction of the work.

12. The bulk of his Dusseldorf paintings are of Indian subjects.

13. In her unpublished dissertation The Iconography of Westward Expansion in American Art, 1820 to 1870: Selected Topics (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1978)Google Scholar, Dawn Glanz questions the title of the 1855 painting and rejects it for the title Comanches Carrying Off a Captive White Girl, which she found beneath a reproduction of the painting in Bailouts Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion (14, No. 25, 392–93).Google ScholarBallou's, hardly a reliable source, frequently altered titles and misspelled artists' names. Glanz also points to the fact that in his correspondence, Wimar merely refers to each of the paintings as “Abduction,” but this could easily have been a shortened version of a lengthy title. The fact that both the 1853 and 1855 paintings were exhibited under the title The Capture of Daniel Boone's Daughter by the Indians in Saint Louis during Wimar's lifetime (for instance, at the Second Annual Saint Louis Fair in 1857) seems ample proof that the Boone subject matter was intended by the artist.

14. The exact date of the purchase is unknown. The 1851 edition of Green's St. Louis Directory lists John A. Brownlee as a partner in a wholesale dry-goods business called Brownlee and Homer.

15. Butts, Porter, Art in Wisconsin (Madison, Wis.: Democrat Printing, 1936), p. 49Google Scholar, and Hoopes, Donelson, “The Düsseldorf Academy and the Americans,” in The Düsseldorf Academy and the Americans (Atlanta: The High Museum of Art, 1972), p. 28.Google Scholar

16. In one of Wimar's letters, dated 1854, quoted in Rathbone, , “Charles Wimar” (note 2 above), p. 14Google Scholar, the artist writes, “I have a studio at Mr. Fay's.… He is to me a second Pomarede [Wimar's teacher in Saint Louis] with a good heart and I hope I can profit as much from him.”

17. Groseclose, Barbara S., Emanuel Leutze, 1816–1868: Freedom Is the Only King (Washington, D.C.: published for the National Collection of Fine Arts by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975), p. 97.Google Scholar

18. This engraving is taken from Tuckerman, Henry's Book of the Artists (New York: G. P. Putnam & Son, 1867).CrossRefGoogle Scholar The painting was purchased by William H. Appleton, but efforts to trace its whereabouts after his death have proved futile to date.

19. See Groseclose, , Leutze, Emanuel (note 17 above), p. 78.Google Scholar

20. Bloch, E. Maurice, George Caleb Bingham: The Evolution of an Artist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. 92.Google Scholar

21. Ibid., p. 86.

22. For a discussion of the significance of the sea in nineteenth-century American painting, see Stein, Roger, Seascape and the American Imagination (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1975).Google Scholar

23. Cole did two paintings based on The Last of the Mohicans. The other depicts Cora kneeling before Tamenund and is in the collection of the New York State Historical Society, Cooperstown.

24. Cooper, James Fenimore, The Last of the Mohicans (New York: D. Appleton, 1888), p. 428.Google Scholar

25. Stanley, John Mix, Portraits of North American Indians, with Sketches of Scenery, Etc. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1852), preface.Google Scholar

26. Stanley was in Saint Louis briefly in 1853, but Wimar was in Düsseldorf at the time.

27. Stanley, , Portraits (note 25 above), pp. 45–46.Google Scholar

28. Bloch, , Bingham (note 20 above), p. 111.Google Scholar

29. Bloch suggests (ibid., p. 112) that Bingham may have been inspired by Chapman, John Gadsby's The RescueGoogle Scholar, which was engraved by John A. Rolph; but I can see no basis for this hypothesis. The presence of a campfire, Indians, and a mother and child is hardly enough evidence to point to Chapman's work as a source, especially as there are equally many features in which the paintings differ. This theme was so prevalent in literature and common enough in illustration to make such a statement unnecessary.

30. Slotkin, , Regeneration Through Violence (note 6 above), p. 350.Google Scholar See also Fiedler, Leslie, The Return of the Vanishing American (New York: Stein & Day, 1968), p. 93.Google Scholar

31. Filson, , The Discovery (note 3 above), p. 39.Google Scholar

32. It seems unlikely that Wimar saw this lithograph in the United States, because he had left for Düsseldorf early in 1852. Bingham did not come to Düsseldorf until late in 1856, around the period when Wimar left the city. I cannot determine if their paths crossed at that time.

33. See Lander, Dawn, “Women and the Wilderness: Tabus in American Literature,” The University of Michigan Papers in Women's Studies, 2, No. 3 (1976), 62–83Google Scholar, for a convincing critique of the myth of the white woman's antipathy to the wilderness.

34. In The Captive Charger (1854Google Scholar, Saint Louis Art Museum), Wimar also used objects stolen by Indians to symbolize the white man and his civilization. In this case, the Indians have captured a dragoon's horse complete with his sword, saddle, and cape.

35. One of Wimar's drawings for this painting depicts her as even more disheveled (1853, Saint Louis Art Museum).

36. One cannot generalize about this practice in regard to all Indian tribes. Axtell, James, “The White Indians of Colonial America,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 32, No. 1, 55–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar, establishes that during the colonial era, the Indians in the East did not rape their captives. Haberly, David T., “Women and Indians: The Last of the Mohicans and the Captivity Tradition,” American Quarterly, 28, No. 4, 431–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar, documents that certain Western tribes did sexually assault their captives. Heard, J. Norman, White into Red (Metuchen, N. J.: Scarecrow Press, 1973), pp. 98, 100Google Scholar, supports this regional distinction.

37. Further research needs to be done to elucidate the sexual content of the captivity paintings. For a study of sexuality in Victorian America, see Rugoff, Milton, Prudery and Passion (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1971).Google Scholar

38. Gerdts, Willian H., “The Marble Savage,” Art in America, 62 (07–08 1974), 64–70.Google Scholar