|Exhibition Public - USA & Canada|
Detail: In the second half of the nineteenth century, artists from the Plains Indian peoples (Lakota, Cheyenne, Arapaho and others dwelling in the Western United States and Canada) produced an extraordinarily rich and distinctive body of drawings chronicling battles, rituals, and winsome if sometimes jarring events of everyday life. Known as Ledger Drawings because they were done on the pages of commercially produced account books, these striking images, many bearing pictographic signatures, are executed in ink, graphite, and colored pencil and watercolor. Some favor flat, stylized forms and a stark economy of means, while others show a lyrical predilection for rhythmic movement, minute descriptive and narrative detail, and dense, mosaic-like surface patterns. What all share is their makers’ acute powers of observation and ambition to record and describe recognizable people, places, things and events—to eloquently picture and record history as it transpired.
Phone No.: (203) 254-4046|
Contact Email: [email protected]
Site URL: https://www.fairfield.edu/museum/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/ledger-drawings-of-the-plains-indians/
Cheyenne Attacking a Pawnee Camp (Ledger Drawing)
Attributed to Howling Wolf (Southern Cheyenne, Central Plains)|
8 ½ x 11 ¼ inches.
Watercolor, graphite and colored pencil on paper
Private collection, courtesy of Donald Ellis Gallery, New York.