Peter Rindisbacher: Difference between revisions

Peter Rindisbacher (1806-1834) was a North American artist who specialized in watercolors and illustrations dealing with First Nation tribes and Western Canada and the United States.

Rindisbacher emigrated from Switzerland to western Canada with his family when he was fifteen. The family joined the Red River colony established by the Earl of Selkirk, located near present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba. Lord Selkirk's land grant, called Assiniboia, was administered by a governor and council but, as all the colony's officials had connections with the Hudson's Bay Company, the colony was effectively an arm of Hudson's Bay's operations. The colony faced difficulties due to a disastrous flood of the Red River, on the eastern boundary of North Dakota, which led to damaged crops and starvation. The Rindisbacher family relocated first to Wisconsin in 1826, and then settled permanently in St. Louis, Missouri in 1829.

From the time he was a teenager until his death at age 28, Rindisbacher was a producing artist. He began working with charcoal as a young boy, with the encouragement of his father, and received one year of formal training as an artist in Switzerland. He executed sketches and watercolors of Indians and animals in north-central Canada and the midwestern United States, including the Chippewa and Metis people living along the Red River. As an adult, Rindisbacher established an artist's studio in St. Louis, where he also produced illustrations for magazines and book covers. Famous works include:

• "The Buffalo Hunt" [1] - circa 1822-24.
• "Inside of a Skin Tent" [2]- 1824, considered the earliest study of a tipi by a non-Indian.
• "Blackfeet Hunting on Snowshoes" - 1833.
• "Hunting the Buffalo" [3]- 1837, frontispiece for Volume 1 of the "History of the Indian Tribes of North America."

He is known to have produced 124 artworks, with forty currently held in the National Archives of Canada. A second large concentration of Rindisbacher's work is found in the West Point Museum, United States Military Academy.

Reference

• Josephy, Alvin M. Jr., "The Artist was a Young Man: The Life Story of Peter Rindisbacher." Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum, 1970.