John Mix Stanley

Background

John was born on January 17, 1814 at Canandaigua, New York, United States. He was orphaned when he was fourteen and spent his boyhood in Naples and Buffalo, New York, as apprentice to a wagon maker.

Education

In 1835 he studied with James Bowman, a portraitist trained in Italy.

Career

At twenty he went to Detroit, where he painted portraits and landscapes; by 1838-39, when he lived in Chicago and Galena, Illinois, he had begun painting the Indians near Fort Snelling. After spending the next few years in New York City, Troy, New York, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Baltimore, Maryland, he went in 1842 with Sumner Dickerman of Troy to Arkansas and New Mexico, sketching and painting Indians and Indian scenes, and during the next ten or twelve years he traveled widely in the West, painting wherever he went.

In June 1843, having gone with Pierce Mason Butler to a council with the chiefs of many Cherokee tribes, he made numerous sketches and paintings of the Cherokee chiefs, whose caprice and superstition made them at first somewhat unwilling to serve as subjects. After spending part of 1845 in New Mexico, with Dickerman he exhibited eighty-three canvases in Cincinnati and Louisville in January 1846, but returned to the West in May 1846.

He visited Keokuk at his lodge, painted portraits of Sauk chiefs and of the wife of Black Hawk, and in the fall of 1846, at Santa Fe, joined the expedition of Stephen Watts Kearny overland to California. Less than a year later he was on his way from California to Oregon, which he reached by July. There he journeyed nearly a thousand miles on the Columbia River by canoe, made sketches of Mount Hood and of scenes on the river, and later painted two pictures of Mount Hood.

From San Francisco, to which he returned, he took ship for New York, but stopped at Honolulu and remained there during most of 1848. The portraits he painted at that time of King Kamehameha III and his queen hang in the government museum, Honolulu, formerly the royal palace.

His hundred and fifty pictures which he exhibited at Troy and Albany, New York but five of the pictures were destroyed by fire in 1865, but a full list (there seem to have been no additions) is given in the catalogue, Portraits of North American Indians, with Sketches of Scenery, etc. , Painted by J. M. Stanley, Deposited with the Smithsonian Institution, which appeared in 1852.

In 1853, when he was appointed artist of the expedition sent by the United States government to explore a route for the Pacific Railroad from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Puget Sound, he was sent on a special mission to the Piegan Indians and brought back about thirty of their chiefs to a council with Isaac Ingalls Stevens at Fort Benton.

He had taken with him a daguerreotype apparatus (probably the first taken up the Missouri River), and made both daguerreotypes and paintings of the Indians, much to their pleasure and admiration.

After spending nine years, 1854-63, in Washington, he went to Buffalo for a year. There he began "The Trial of Red Jacket, " a picture containing about a hundred figures, his most important work.

He died in Detroit, Michigan, of heart disease.

Achievements

• John Mix Stanley was well-known for exhibition of his about a hundred and fifty pictures at Troy and Albany, New Haven, Hartford, Washington. This collection, which is described by the painter as containing accurate portraits painted from life of "forty-three different tribes of Indians, obtained at the cost, hazard, and inconvenience of a ten years' tour through the South-western Prairies, New Mexico, California, and Oregon, " was deposited in the Smithsonian Institution in 1852. Also as an artist-explorer, Stanley had traveled extensively, especially in the American W. He created a large collection of maps, which was held by the Smithsonian Institution.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Portraits of North American Indians, With Sketches of Scenery, Etc., Painted by J. M. Stanley. Deposited With the Smithsonian Institution

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Money Changer

    (John Mix Stanley (1814-1872) "Money changer" Oil on Canva...)

  • GREATBIGCANVAS "Prairie Indian Encampment, c.1870 by John Mix Stanley Photographic Print with Black Frame, 48" x 30"

    (Photographic Print with Black Frame entitled 'Prairie Ind...)

  • Portraits of North American Indians Volume 2; with sketches of scenery, etc., painted

    (This historic book may have numerous typos and missing te...)

  • Portraits Of North American Indians,: With Sketches Of Scenery, Etc.,.

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • Portraits of North American Indians, Vol. 2: With Sketches of Scenery, Etc (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Portraits of North American Indians, Vol. 2:...)

  • John Mix Stanley and his Indian paintings,

    (John Mix Stanley and his Indian paintings)

  • Portraits of North American Indians, with sketches of scenery, etc., painted by J. M. Stanley. Deposited with the Smithsonian institution 1852 Hardcover

    (Lang:- eng, Pages 90. Reprinted in 2015 with the help of ...)

  • book

  • book

  • John Mix Stanley, Artist-Explorer...An article From the Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1924.

  • book

  • book

Views

Stanley's primary interest and sympathies were with the American Indians.

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• “Stanley’s portrayals of Native Americans set him apart from other artists of his era, ” says Laura Fry, Haub curator of Western American art at Washington’s Tacoma Art Museum, which hosts the exhibit “Painted Journeys: The Art of John Mix Stanley” through May 1. “Rather than representing native peoples as an ‘exotic other, ’ Stanley depicts Native Americans in familiar roles, showing a shared humanity with his Euro-American audience. By showing native individuals leading diplomatic meetings, engaged in the democratic process and participating in everyday family activities, Stanley encouraged empathy and understanding between cultures. ”

Connections

Stanley married Alice C. English in 1854, when he was 40 and essentially finished with his western travels. They had five children together, two of whom died as infants. Their son L. C. Stanley published a biographical account of his father, entitled "John Mix Stanley, Artist-Explorer, " in the 1924 Annual Report Smithsonian Institution, edited by David I. Bushnell, Jr.

Another son, Louis Stanley, was a railroad lawyer who married Jane C. Stanley, a watercolorist. Their daughter, Stanley's granddaughter, was fellow artist and painter Alice Caroline Stanley (1895–1996), the wife of former Secretary of State Dean Acheson (1893–1971) and mother to David Campion Acheson (born 1921).

Spouse:

Alice C. English

Son:

L. C. Stanley

Son:

Louis Stanley

associate:

Sumner Dickerman

References

• Painted Journeys: The Art of John Mix Stanley (The Charles M. Russell Center Series on Art and Photography of the American West) by Peter H. Hassrick (2015-07-09)
• John Mix Stanley: A Traveller in the West; The University of Michigan Museum of Art, December 7, 1969 - January 18, 1970
• John Mix Stanley, Artist-Explorer. An original article from the Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1924.
• Painted Journeys: The Art of John Mix Stanley (The Charles M. Russell Center Series on Art and Photography of the American West)