- 110
King, Charles Bird
Estimate
15,000 - 20,000 USD
bidding is closed
Description
- [Chippewa Chief Peechekir, also called Buffalo: A Charcoal Head Study by Charles Bird King for a Painting Later Published in McKenney and Hall's History of the Indian Tribes of North America]. [Washington, D.C.: circa 1830]
- paper, pencil, paint
Single sheet (10 1/8 x 6 1/4 in.; 258 x 159 mm), charcoal heightened with white on gray paper, unsigned.
Handsomely presented in a ruled blue and black mat. A beautiful image in fine condition.
Handsomely presented in a ruled blue and black mat. A beautiful image in fine condition.
Literature
Andrew F. Cosentino, The Paintings of Charles Bird King - 1785-1862 pp.203-4, cat. nos. 409, 641; James D. Horan, The McKenney-Hall Portrait Gallery of American Indians pp.206-7; Herman J. Viola, The Indian Legacy of Charles Bird King p.128
Catalogue Note
A RARE CHARLES BIRD KING STUDY OF A CHIPPEWA CHIEF Peechekir (or Peechekor, Buffalo) was "a solid, straight formed Indian," Colonel McKenney recalled many years after meeting the Chippewa (Ojibwa, Anishinabe) chief at a treaty ceremony in the Michigan Territory circa 1825-27. According to Horan, Charles Bird King copied this head from a James Otto Lewis painting, but no evidence survives to prove it. It was probably lost, as were many Lewis paintings and the King oil of Peechekir, in the 1865 Smithsonian fire.
This sketch is one of sixteen known studies by King of Indian heads, discovered in 1974 among family papers by Bayard Leroy King, Saunderston, Rhode Island, a descendant of one Edward King, the artist's second cousin. The study is illustrated in Cosentino's The Paintings of Charles Bird King, and in Viola's The Indian Legacy of Charles Bird King. The McKenney and Hall History of the Indian Tribes of North America... portrait of Peechekir is clearly based on this sketch.
This sketch is one of sixteen known studies by King of Indian heads, discovered in 1974 among family papers by Bayard Leroy King, Saunderston, Rhode Island, a descendant of one Edward King, the artist's second cousin. The study is illustrated in Cosentino's The Paintings of Charles Bird King, and in Viola's The Indian Legacy of Charles Bird King. The McKenney and Hall History of the Indian Tribes of North America... portrait of Peechekir is clearly based on this sketch.