Lot 55
HENRY HERMAN CROSS (American 1837-1918) A PAINTING, "Harness Racing," 1882,
oil on canvas, signed and dated L/L, "H.H. Cross / 1882." 24" x 36"
- Provenance: Private Collection, The Woodlands, Texas.
- Notes: 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 teen-ager 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 spent the last few years of his life living and painting in French Lick, Indiana. He is buried next to his brother, a talented stone sculptor, in the Sulphur Creek Cemetery. Sources: AskArt.com; Peggy and Harold Samuels, The Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West; Peter Hastings Falk, Who Was Who in American Art; Doris Dawdy, Artists of the American West, Vol. 1; Dorothy Harmsen, Western Americana
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Condition:
The painting has been lined. There is scattered craquelure throughout but the paint surface is stable. Under UV: the lighter blue lines in the sky (which is visible without UV) are inpainting. This includes the large patch in the sky at center. There are a few other lines of inpainting in the ground but the horse and rider appear intact.
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