Creative Commons License
Noon-day Rest
(18th and 19th Centuries )
Extracts from Alfred Jacob Miller’s original text, which accompanied his images of Native Americans, are included below for reference.
"Every day at 12 o'clock the caravan halts, the horses are permitted to rest and feed, men receive their dinner, and then take a Siesta... The time however to me was too valuable to indulge in the luxury,- so immediatly after the halt, I would mount the wagon, get out my port-folio, and go to work. Our Captain, who took great interest in this matter, came up to me one day while so engaged, & said 'you should sketch this and that thing' and so on. 'Well!' I answered (possibly with a slight asperity). 'if I had half a dozen pair of hands, it should ahve been done!'" A.J. Miller, extracted from "The West of Alfred Jacob Miller" (1837).
In July 1858 William T. Walters commissioned 200 watercolors at twelve dollars apiece from Baltimore born artist Alfred Jacob Miller. These paintings were each accompanied by a descriptive text, and were delivered in installments over the next twenty-one months and ultimately were bound in three albums. Transcriptions of field-sketches drawn during the 1837 expedition that Miller had undertaken to the annual fur-trader's rendezvous in the Green River Valley (in what is now western Wyoming), these watercolors are a unique record of the closing years of the western fur trade.
Inscription
Provenance
Provenance (from the French provenir, 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody, or location of a historical object.
William T. Walters, Baltimore, 1858-1860, by commission; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1894, by inheritance; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.
Exhibitions
| 1988 | Alfred Jacob Miller: Maryland and the West. The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore; Washington College, Chestertown; Frostburg State University, Frostburg; Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, Rockville. |
Conservation
| Date | Description | Narrative |
|---|---|---|
| 4/1/1950 | Treatment | cleaned |
Geographies
USA (Place of Origin)
Measurements
H: 9 7/16 x W: 13 1/8 in. (24 x 33.3 cm)
Credit Line
Commissioned by William T. Walters, 1858-1860
Location in Museum
Not on view
Accession Number
In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection.
In libraries, galleries, museums, and archives, an accession number is a unique identifier assigned to each object in the collection.
37.1940.139
