Paul
Kane’s artwork is among the earliest record of life in the Northwest
before white settlement. His romantic oil paintings along with the
best-selling book about his travels influenced domestic and international
perceptions of North American Aboriginal people into the 20th century.
Today his pictures of early native life are used to illustrate history
in books, films and at historic sites. While his artwork is familiar,
Kane himself is not well known.
The Irish-born Paul Kane (1810-1871) remains one of the most frequently
reproduced painters, past or present. Paul Kane’s two-and-a-half year sketching
trip across thousands of miles of difficult frontier is still unequaled by
any other artist on the continent. In recent years, Paul Kane has been identified
as one of the most important ethnological artists of nineteenth-century North
America. This group includes Kane’s U.S. mentor, George Catlin, along
with Charles Bird King, Karl Bodmer and John Mix Stanley.
Paul Kane was one of the first "tourists" — as opposed to
explorer, trapper or surveyor — to travel the northern fur-trade route
from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean. He was also the first Canadian
painter to be credited with a best-selling book, Wanderings of an Artist
Among the Indians of North America. Published in London in 1859, this popular
travelogue was translated into French, Danish and German editions. |
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