Indian Canoe
Primary
Albert Bierstadt
(Solingen, Germany, 1830–Irving, New York, 1902)
NationalityAmerican, North America
Datecirca 1886
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsFramed: 27 1/4 × 35 3/4 in. (69.2 × 90.8 cm)
Sight: 21 5/8 × 30 in. (54.9 × 76.2 cm)
Sight: 21 5/8 × 30 in. (54.9 × 76.2 cm)
Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of C.R. Smith, G1976.21.3
Rights Statement
Collection AreaArt of the United States
Object numberG1976.21.3
On View
On viewLocations
- exhibition BMA, Gallery, B1 - Odom Gallery
Collection Highlight
During his training at the Arts Academy of Düsseldorf, Albert Bierstadt engaged deeply with the spiritual and sensory tenets of German Romanticism. The movement, both intellectual and aesthetic, emphasized sublime or transcendent experience—a concept that lent itself well to depicting the American West. In landscapes like "Indian Canoe," Bierstadt aimed to convey a sense of the divine through nature. The diminutive figure set amidst the vast sky and towering trees has no individual traits, and serves as a stand-in for the awing experience of the sublime. The sun setting behind a lone Indian may also be read as a signal of the looming decline of Native Americans’ traditional way of life.
Exhibitions
Elbridge Ayer Burbank
not dated