LOT Davis Brothers Auction  /  Montana Frontier History Auction  / 

956

John Louis Clarke Bronze Mold Montana

Currency:USD Category:American Indian Art Start Price:10.00 USD Estimated At:1,000.00 - 1,500.00 USD
John Louis Clarke Bronze Mold Montana
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Artist is John Louis Clarke of Glacier Park Montana. Work is entitled "Grizzly Bear". This Mold was used to produce bronzes. The bear it was cast from is pictured but not included. How could a Native American boy lacking the ability to hear or speak and raised at the edge of what would become Glacier National Park grow to become one of the most celebrated and collected wood sculptors in American history? It’s quite a story. John L. Clarke (1881-1970) experienced a meteoric rise to national notoriety. Many individuals and the Native American experience molded this man—who was made with the bark on. John L. Clarke was born the grandson of Blackfeet Chief Stands Alone and infamous frontiersman Malcom Clarke (1817-1869). Malcom’s murder led in part to the 1870 Baker Massacre of 217 Blackfeet on the Marias River in northern Montana—an event burned into the memory of every Blackfeet. Andrew R. Graybill, author of The Red and the White: A Family Saga of the American West wrote, "The Clarkes thus offer a rich historical lens through which to view the shifting grounds of race in the West and the wider nation during the mid-nineteenth century. They are also ideal in another sense: their individual stories are enormously compelling, for both the historian and the general reader." Robbed of his hearing by scarlet fever at just two years old, John and his family moved from the hardscrabble ranch life of central Montana near Highwood to Midvale, now East Glacier Park, on the western end of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. As cultural historian and John L. Clarke biographer Larry Len Peterson wrote in Blackfeet John L. “Cutapuis” Clarke and the Silent Call of Glacier National Park: America’s Wood Sculptor, “He felt a visceral fascination with the natural world and found his home in the grandeur of Glacier country in northwestern Montana. Wilderness, especially big wilderness, is where wildness most often happens, and it was where Clarke discovered himself and subjects for his art.” After attending several deaf schools in North Dakota, Montana, and Wisconsin, Clarke worked in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a master wood carver for several years and then returned to Midvale around 1910, started sculpting, and never wavered. He rose to fame by applying his passions for the Glacier country, its wildlife, and Native Americans to the arts of wood carving, sculpture, sketching, and painting. Louis W. Hill, Great Northern Railway president and unflagging promoter of Glacier National Park, played a significant part in that rise by including Clarke in a clever and well-planned promotional campaign that was initiated soon after the park was created in 1910. John L. Clarke and his wife Mamie were very moved by the visits of their dear friend Charles M. Russell (1864-1926) who in 1918 urged Clarke to embrace his Native American heritage. Russell understood that it would play well to tourists visiting the park. Soon, Clarke’s carvings often were signed not only with “J. L. Clarke,” but also at times “Cutapuis,” Piegan for “Doesn’t Talk.” Taking a cue from Russell, Clarke eventually illustrated his letters to friends and patrons and also began using an Indian head cipher with his signature. Clarke and Joe De Yong would be close friends for fifty years. In 1918 there was national recognition for Clarke when a prestigious gold medal was presented by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia for a carving of a bear. Clarke exhibited there in 1917, 1918, 1922, 1923-1932, and 1935. Many more national honors would follow. Clarke created art that was collected not only by adoring tourists, but also by the famous such as his friends Charles M. Russell and Joe De Yong—who was also deaf; John D. Rockefeller, Jr.; and President William Harding, among many others. His 1956 masterwork, The Blackfeet Encampment, four feet by thirteen feet, graces the Montana Historical Society in Helena. Well-received retrospective exhibitions followed at the MHS in 1993/1994 and 2014. On March 1, 2003, John L. Clarke was inducted into the Gallery of Outstanding Montanans at the MHS. The citation for John L. Clarke in part read, “Facing odds that would have deterred lesser men, he crafted a career as a renowned Blackfeet artist. His legacy survives as a worthy inspiration for all Montanans.” Spokesman for the nominating committee, Kirby Lambert, gave special praise and lauded Clarke as “…one of my personal favorites” of the almost three dozen individuals in the Gallery.
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