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Henry Cross "Perils of the Chase" Oil on Canvas

Currency:USD Category:Art Start Price:2,000.00 USD Estimated At:4,000.00 - 8,000.00 USD
Henry Cross  Perils of the Chase  Oil on Canvas
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Henry Cross (1837-1918) "Perils of the Chase" 30" x 46" Oil on canvas. Signed lower right. Painted circa 1890. Born in Flemingville, New York. Henry Cross became a reputed painter of Indian portraits and racehorses and was described by Buffalo Bill Cody as the "greatest painter of Indian portraiture of all times." (Samuels 116). He was a perpetually adventurous person who, as a teenager ran away several times to join a circus and then at age sixteen, traveled to Paris where he studied with animal painter Rosa Bonheur between 1853 and 1855. Returning to the United States, he earned a living painting animals on the sides of wagons and traveled West, again working with a circus. For the first time, he saw real-life Indians, but they were tame because they were circus spectators. His experiences during this time stimulated his interest in Western themes. In 1862, after having had a portrait studio in Chicago for two years, he moved to Minnesota during the Sioux uprising with the intent of painting the Indians President Abraham Lincoln had sentenced to death for the massacre of white settlers. During this period, he learned to speak the Sioux language, and Buffalo Bill Cody referred to him as "the greatest painter of Indian portraiture of all times" (Harmsen Western Americana). Cross, described as a "plump, bespectacled man with a walrus mustache" (Samuels 116) left a rich legacy of portrayals of Indian genre and their interaction with white military civilization. Among his subjects were all of the Sioux Indians sentenced to death by President Lincoln because of their violence against white settlers. This included a portrait of Sioux Chief Red Cloud. In the late 1880s, he began to paint Indian ceremonies and in the 1890s, visited Hopi pueblos in Arizona and painted the Snake Dance. The Gilcrease Institute of Tulsa, Oklahoma has one of the most comprehensive collections of his Indian chief portraits, and other collections are in the Chicago Historical Society and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. He was in California during 1864-65 to paint the horses of Lucky Baldwin. He later painted portraits of Kit Carson, Wild Bill Hickok, Sitting Bull, and other famous westerners.