
Aaron Bastian
Director
Sold for US$107,475 inc. premium
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Provenance
Thomas Nygard, Inc., Bozeman, Montana.
Acquired by the present owner from the above, 1997.
Joseph Swims Under, a member of the Blackfeet tribe and one of Winold Reiss's sitters, is featured in the present work in commanding profile with full feathered headdress. Swims Under clutches a war hammer in a richly detailed presentation of the figure's visage and dress. German-born and educated Reiss was passionate about painting the American Indian as soon as he arrived in the US in 1913. In 1919, he first visited Browning, Montana where he was introduced to the Blackfeet Nation. He would continue to make annual visits to the region through 1943, and set up a summer art school there. After spending so much time with tribespeople in the area, he was invited to be a member of the tribe and given the name Beaver Child. The artist's most significant commission, for the Great Northern Railway, produced at least 81 portraits of local Blackfeet Indian peoples that was used as promotional materials espousing western travel.1
1 Jeffrey C. Stewart, To Color America: Portraits by Winold Reiss, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington City, 1989, pp. 127, 132-3.