Catching Up

Extracts from Alfred Jacob Miller’s original text, which accompanied his images of Native Americans, are included below for reference.

"The point of view is from Monsr Proveau's Tent,- and the time near sunset. The men have been quietly preparing their evening meals. Mo'sieur P. adipose & rotonde - 'larding the lean earth as he walks along,'- now raises both hands to his mouth and with stentorian lungs bawls out someithing like 'Attrapez des Chevaux'- the men immediately rise and run towards a cloud of dust from which the horses are seen emerging,- these are being driven in by the horse-guards from their range, some 2 or 3 miles, and the men secure each their own by lariats trailing on the ground from their necks, extending some 15 feet,- thense they proceed to their pickets, where they are secured for the night, with sufficient range to permit their grazing until morning." 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.