6303

RECTO 

Chief Medicine Eagle 1923

Head-and-shoulders in profile to the left, wearing a deep red robe with a string of turquoise beads around his neck and a full tribal headdress incorporating feathers of yellow, red and brown

Oil on board, 69.8 x 49.5 cm (27 ½ x 19 ½ in.)

Inscribed lower left: P A de László / 1923.   

Inscribed centre left: Medicine Eagle

Private Collection        

During the 1880s and 1890s the impresario “Buffalo Bill” Cody brought his ‘Wild West’ show to Europe, including London, where he toured several times. His first visit to Earl’s Court, in 1887 at the time of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, was highly successful. His cast included Native American Indians, particularly the Lakota tribe, wagon trains, wild animals and troops of settlers and cowboys. Buffalo Bill faced numerous competitors and imitators, although not all of them treated their performers well, often abandoning them in Europe when they ran into financial difficulties or when the performers became ill. The Wild West show continued to be popular for some fifty years, until the advent of the cinema and the consequent evolution of the Wild West film. Cody himself set up a production company in 1913, and made an unsuccessful film The Indian Wars before his death in 1917.

In 1922, Bill Cody’s successor, Colonel Tim McCoy, was asked by the Famous Players-Lasky Film Company to help recruit 500 Indians for the film The Covered Wagon, directed by James Cruze. McCoy was also hired as technical advisor to ensure authenticity. The Covered Wagon premiered on 10 April 1923 at Grauman’s Egyptian Theater. To promote the film, McCoy recruited 35 Arapahoe^[1] men, women, and children to appear on stage before the film to teach the audience about Native American culture.

The film’s success prompted a tour to the British Isles which entertained and intrigued the British audiences. Unused to living indoors, the Arapahoe made a shambles of their boarding house, building fires in the middle of the room and carving up furniture with their tomahawks. The producers had to pay $800 for the damage.^[2]

The present portrait was painted at the request of the artist's fourth son, Patrick, who saw Medicine Eagle when visiting an exhibition at the Crystal Palace with his father. According to family legend, de László asked the Canadian High Commissioner to persuade Medicine Eagle to sit for his portrait and he duly presented himself at the artist's studio in Fitzjohn's Avenue the next day. Nevertheless, according to the artist’s correspondence,^[3] it was the director of the St. James’ Theatre (in King Street, London), Gilbert Miller, who arranged for de László to meet Colonel McCoy on 4 September 1923, while the Indian troupe was performing at the London Pavilion, so that the artist could “make a selection.” This would suggest that de László had not yet chosen Chief Medicine Eagle as a sitter. The letter in question also reveals that the artist had planned to send his car to and from the Crystal Palace for him.

Apparently Chief Medicine Eagle sat unblinking and immobile for two hours, in which time this portrait was painted. De László also made a portrait drawing [6314] which was used as a postcard to promote The Covered Wagon.

Verso is a preparatory oil study of Count Lipót Berchtold [112282].

PROVENANCE:        

In the possession of the artist on his death

EXHIBITED:        

•The French Gallery, London, A Series of Portraits and Studies By Philip A. de László, M.V.O., June 1924, no. 48

•Doncaster Art Gallery, Doncaster, Fifteenth Summer Exhibition of Modern Art, 1926

•Christie’s, King Street, London, A Brush with Grandeur. 6-22 January 2004, no. 95

LITERATURE:         

•De Laszlo, Sandra, ed., & Christopher Wentworth-Stanley, asst. ed., A Brush with Grandeur, Paul Holberton publishing, London 2004, p. 160, ill.

•DLA116-0011, Letter from Louis Reihersoly (on behalf of Gilbert Miller) to de László, 4 September 1923

With thanks to Professor Robert Rydell for his help in compiling this entry, and to Jonathan King (Curator, North American Collections, Department of Ethnography at the British Museum) for donating the postcard to Sandra

de Laszlo

CWS & CC 2008