Background
Karl Ferdinand Wimar was born on February 20, 1828, in Siegburg, Germany. He was a son of Ludwig Gottfried Wimar and Elizabete (Schmitz) Wimar. In his teens, Karl immigrated to St. Louis, Missouri, together with his mother.
Eiskellerstraße 1, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany
From 1852 till 1856, Karl attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
Eiskellerstraße 1, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany
From 1852 till 1856, Karl attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
Karl Ferdinand Wimar was born on February 20, 1828, in Siegburg, Germany. He was a son of Ludwig Gottfried Wimar and Elizabete (Schmitz) Wimar. In his teens, Karl immigrated to St. Louis, Missouri, together with his mother.
It was in 1846, that Karl began studying painting under the guidance of Leon Pomarede, with whom he also traveled up the Mississippi River. In 1849, Karl received word, that he had been bequeathed a sizeable sum by a cultured Pole, who had been impressed by the boy's ambition during his time in St. Louis. This enabled Wimar to enter the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1852, where he studied for four years, first under Joseph Fay and then with Emanuel Leutze.
In 1856, Karl left Düsseldorf, where he studied at Düsseldorf Academy, for St. Louis, the United States. Approximately at that time, he created one of his most famous works, titled "The Abduction of Boone's Daughter by the Indians". This was one of his first works to achieve notice in the United States.
During his creative career, Wimar traveled quite a lot. He made at least three trips on steamboats of the American Fur Company to trading posts on the upper Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers in order to paint the Native Americans. These expeditions brought him into contact with Crows, Yanktons, Brulés, Poncas and Mandans, and yielded sketches and photographs, from which he painted in winter. Karl's friendliness won him the esteem of his red-skinned subjects, who showered him with costumes, weapons, implements and trinkets, which he studied minutely in order to have his detail exact.
At the beginning of the 1860's, Wimar was commissioned to produce a set of mural paintings for the St. Louis Court House. For this work, he and his half-brother, August H. Becker, received $1000. Shortly after completing this work, Karl passed away.
It's worth mentioning, that Karl also painted his fellow-townsmen for a livelihood, but every possible free moment he gave to depicting the life of the Indians and the West.
Karl Ferdinand Wimar was a well-known artist, who devoted his life to portraying the American Wild W. He gained prominence for an early painting of a colonial incident, titled "The Abduction of Boone's Daughter by the Indians" (1855–1856). This work depicted the 1776 capture near Boonesborough, Kentucky, of Jemima Boone and two other girls by a Cherokee-Shawnee raiding party. In addition, Wimar's other well-known works included murals, painted in 1861, in the Rotunda of the St. Louis Court House.
During his lifetime, Karl received several awards. His work "Attack on an Emigrant Train" received the first prize at the St. Louis fair in 1869 and was shown in the retrospective exhibit of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. The work "Buffalo Hunt by Indians" won praise from William F. Cody as a faithful picturization of the hunts, held by certain tribes.
Wimar primarily painted the themes of Indian life on the Great Plains, showing the Native American hunts of buffalo and other activities, related to their nomadic lives. He also painted scenes of the emigrant wagon trains, that carried pioneer settlers across the western expanses.
Physical Characteristics: Karl's high cheekbones, tanned skin, pigeon-toed, shambling gait, trapper clothes and long black hair led many to believe the artist was himself an Indian.
On March 7, 1861, Karl married Anna (von Senden) Wimar. Their marriage produced one daughter, Winona, who passed away two years later after her father had died.
