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Wm. Demuth Cigar Store Indian “Captain Jack”

Currency:USD Category:Antiques / Antiquities Start Price:100.00 USD Estimated At:30,000.00 - 35,000.00 USD
Wm. Demuth Cigar Store Indian “Captain Jack”
Tobacconist Indian. Zinc statue, 64" (h) on a 12" base. Maker’s plate cast in base, c. 1870. Professionally repainted.
Captain Jack stands shading his eyes with his right hand. He holds a tomahawk in his left hand and wears a headdress with feathers sticking out in different directions. A tree stump is present, apparently a vestigial element from classical marble statuary.
The model for the statue was said to be a wooden tobacconist figure attributed to Samuel Robb or Thomas Brooks (1828-95). Closely related is another zinc figure wielding a knife instead of shielding his eyes, in a catalogue of the Chicago firm of Metzler, Rothschild & Co in 1879. No copies of the latter statue are known, but is was said to be the case by Chicago’s Henry Dibblee Co. after a woodcarving by Brooks.

Catalogue: Demuth 1875 No. 57, Captain Jack, entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by WM. DEMUTH & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, 5ft. 3 in. on a 1-ft.-10-in.-high rolling wooden pedestal, painted or bronzed, $100
Inscription: 1. W. DEMUTH & COMANUFRS. 501 BROADWAY, NEW YORK
FROM: Zinc Sculpture in America: 1850-1950, By Carol A. Grissom