Edwin Willard Deming1860–1942The Mourning Brave
May one see it?
Unknown
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Washington, D.C., United States
The owner is known; whether it is on view today is not.
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the painting
Edwin Willard Deming’s paintings romanticized the lives of Native Americans, feeding the myth of a vanishing race of noble savages. In this painting an Indian brave mourns the death of an Indian woman inside a shadowed teepee. With his hands covering his face, he prays over her body, asking the Great Mystery, symbolized by the light that streams from above, to protect her spirit and guide it to the “Happy Western land beyond the Great Waters” (Walsh, ed., Edwin Willard Deming, His Work, 1925).
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- 1912.9.1
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Image: Smithsonian American Art Museum — CC0
