James Otto Lewis (1799-1858) American, (7) Native American Portrait Prints

Lot description

James Otto Lewis (1799-1858) American, (7) Native American Portrait Prints. All matching frames. Overall Size: 18 3/4 x 15 1/4 in. Sight Size: 11 x 9 in. James Otto Lewis was born on February 3rd, 1799 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He grew up learning to draw and paint, mainly self-taught. He began his engraving career in Philadelphia about 1815, swiftly developing a reputation for his rapid work and verisimilitude. Fascinated by what he learned of the western territories, he went west in 1819 and began traveling with Governor Lewis Cass of the Michigan Territory. Lewis attended numerous treaties and ceremonies held in Indiana and Wisconsin, where he began to make portraits of many of the participants, particularly during the 1826 expedition of Thomas L. McKenney, who was superintendent of Indian Affairs, then in the War Department. For the next decade he worked officially for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, painting official portraits in an effort to preserve a record of Native American leaders and what was believed to be a vanishing culture. He published copies of his work in The Aboriginal Port Folio between 1835 and 1836. Of the 80 plates published therein, 9 were sketched at Fort Wayne in present-day Indiana, 13 at Green Bay, Wisconsin, 12 at Fond du Lac, 12 from “Massinnewa” (from the 1826 expedition), and the remaining 3 at unidentified locations. He returned to the East to work as an engraver for companies in Boston and later New York City, dying there on November 2nd, 1858. His works are now held in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, considered some of the earliest efforts at visual preservation of Native American culture by a non-indigenous person.