George de Forest Brush : the Indian paintings

George de Forest Brush (1854-1941) created an important series of paintings of American Indians that was much celebrated in his time but has been seen rarely since.

Brush combined extraordinary technical skills acquired during several years of training in the studio of Jean-Leon Gerome with first-hand experience of living among the Arapahoe, Shoshone, and Crow Indians in Wyoming and Montana.

Completed during the 1880s, many of these works were quickly acquired by major American collectors and have remained in private hands through several generations.This beautiful book, the first scholarly study of Brush's Indian paintings, features detailed discussions of individual paintings, interpretative essays exploring the historical and cultural context in which the paintings were produced, a comprehensive chronology, and lavish colour reproductions of numerous paintings not shown publicly since the nineteenth century.After more than six years of study in Paris during the 1870s, Brush travelled to Wyoming to join his brother in a ranching venture.

Fascinated by the native people he met, he quickly undertook life studies of Indians living on the Wind River and Crow reservations.

Later, when he returned east, he produced a number of studio paintings in which the Indian served as metaphor.

New research reveals that these stunningly beautiful paintings of American Indians are also, surprisingly, complex meditations on the advent of modernism.