| 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. 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 joining the ranks of Charles Bird King, Karl Bodmer, John Mix Stanley
and Kane’s U.S. mentor,
George Catlin.
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
has been translated into French, Danish and German. |
