584 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1960 



His position and oflScial station in the Indian country, and frequent contact 

 with them, has enabled him to study minutely their character and peculiarities ; 

 and pursuing, for pleasure and amusement, the bent of his tastes, he has been 

 enabled to transfer to canvas a more animated picture of real Indian life, than 

 any we have ever seen before. Those who have attempted to sketch Indians in 

 their homes, have been forced to take their impressions without the opportunity 

 for minute study of cast or character. Generally, the Indian is averse to hav- 

 ing his portrait, or any thing connected with him, painted. He believes it 

 shortens his life. Capt. E. has had the opportunity to study his subject without 

 these, or any other caprices, interfering with his purposes. 



At least two more paintings were completed during the winter, about 

 which "H.," writing in the Missouri Republican (May 2, 1848), de- 

 scribed one as "the departure of Sioux Indians, on their way to confirm 

 a treaty of peace with tlie Chippewas. We scarcely know which most 

 to admire here — the truth in the delineation of the Indian figures, or 

 the superb background landscape of the picture ; take out the figures 

 and it would still form a beautiful picture from the admirable delinea- 

 tion of the sceneiy. * * * One less observant with Indian character 

 than Captain Eastman, could never have painted this picture." 



It was this picture, contrasted with the two landscapes "found 

 in St. Louis" about 1848 (discussed on p. 580) that showed the 

 "onward progress of the artist." The earlier paintings, it will be 

 recalled, were in "the style of coloring common in England from the 

 time of Gainsborough to that of Turner." But this landscape with 

 Indians, just finished, was "colored in the style of the great English 

 master of landscape. We do not remember of having seen or known 

 of a single painting by any American artist, except Eastman, that 

 gives an idea of the warmth of the coloring of the school of Turner." 



The other new work commented on by "H.," in the Missouri Ee- 

 publican, was of quite a difi'erent subject: "a home scene of Indian 

 life." It was, said this writer, 



quite unlike the vast mass of Indian pictures it has been our bad luck to see — 

 for it is true. There is no attitudinizing — no position of figures in such a group 

 that you can swear the artist's hands, and not their own free will, put them 

 there. There is here the homely truth of an Indian cabin — the men lounging 

 with their pipes in the distance, the women at work in the foreground : all the 

 slight peculiarities, that would be unnoticed by an artist less conversant with 

 the Indian life than Eastman, are brought forth, and the picture is full of ob- 

 jects suggestive of certain superstitions, habits, or ornaments, to one who knows 

 any thing of Sioux life. 



The year 1848, which saw the close of Eastman's service on the 

 Upper Mississippi and of his contact with the northern Indians, was 

 a busy and productive one for him. It camiot be determined how 

 many of the pictures now to be reported were painted during his 

 remaining months at Fort Snelling; perhaps some of them, presently 

 to be sold to the American Art Union, had been the work of earlier 



