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Seth Eastman Art

American, 1808-1875

Seth Eastman is known primarily for his depictions of daily life among the Dakota and Ojibwe tribes in Minnesota. He was born to Robert and Sarah Lee Eastman on January 24, 1808, in Brunswick, Maine. Eastman attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, where he received training in sketching and topography. While at West Point, he began to paint scenes featuring the daily life of local Native American tribes. In 1830, Eastman was assigned to topography duty on the frontier and spent a short time at Fort Snelling before returning to West Point to teach. While at Fort Snelling, Eastman married Wakaninajinwin, the fifteen-year-old daughter of Cloud Man, a Dakota chief. Eastman left in 1832 for another military assignment soon after the birth of their baby girl, Winona and declared his marriage ended when he left. Winona was also known as Mary Nancy Eastman and was the mother of Charles Alexander Eastman, author of Indian Boyhood. From 1833–40, Eastman taught drawing at West Point. In 1835 he married his second wife, Mary Henderson, the daughter of a West Point surgeon. In 1841, he returned to Fort Snelling as a military commander and remained there with Mary and their five children for the next seven years. It was during this time that Eastman began visually recording the everyday way of life of the Dakota and Ojibwe people. His wife Mary also became involved in preserving Indian culture by writing books on local tales and legends, which he would illustrate for her. The most important of these books was entitled Dahcotah: Or, Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling. In 1847, Henry R. Schoolcraft, a former Indian agent, was chosen to conduct a study of the American Indian people. Eastman illustrated the six-volume set, published between 1851 and 1857 as Historical and Statistical Information Respecting the History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States. The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Military Affairs also commissioned Eastman to paint images of 17 important military forts, which he completed between 1870–75. These paintings are now housed in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. Eastman's works are significant for Minnesota history because art historians believe that Eastman based many of his paintings and sketches on his observations in the Sioux villages of Kaposia and Little Crow, as well as in Scott, Wabasha and Winona counties. Eastman died of a stroke while painting at his home in Washington, D.C., on August 31, 1875.

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19th century color engraving indigenous figures feathers text full body face
By Seth Eastman
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Moqui Dancers, Moqui Pipe, Navajo Cradle & Headdress" is a hand-colored engraving by Seth Eastman. It depicts encyclopedic depictions of Native American...
Category

1840s Seth Eastman Art

Materials

Engraving

Road-Side View (View in Wisconsin)
By Seth Eastman
Located in New York, NY
Label on stretcher bar: No. 175. / AMERICAN ART-UNION. /Road-Side View / Painted by / Seth Eastman / Distributed December 20, 1850.
Category

19th Century Hudson River School Seth Eastman Art

Materials

Oil

"Dahcota Mission of Peace 1820, Warning Against Tresspass, " by Seth Eastman
By Seth Eastman
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Dahkota Mission of Peace 1820, Warning Against Tresspass" is a color lithograph by Seth Eastman. It features figures trying to warn people against trespassing on their land. 7 3/4...
Category

1840s Seth Eastman Art

Materials

Lithograph

"Camanche Inscription on the Shoulder Blade of a Buffalo, " after S. Eastman
By Seth Eastman
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Camanche Inscription on the Shoulder Blade of a Buffalo" is a lithograph after an original drawing by Seth Eastman. It depicts Native American inscriptions on an animal bone. It was...
Category

1850s Seth Eastman Art

Materials

Lithograph

"Coin Beads--Western US Wilderness Expedition, " Color Lithograph by Seth Eastman
By Seth Eastman
Located in Milwaukee, WI
"Coin Beads - Western US Wilderness Expedition of 1847" is a color lithograph by Seth Eastman. It depicts various Native American beads used as currency and...
Category

1840s Seth Eastman Art

Materials

Lithograph

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Dusk Forest Scene, Catskills by Lockwood DeForest (American, 1850-1932)
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"Dusk Forest Scene, Catskills," 1875 by Hudson River School painter Lockwood DeForest (American, 1850-1932) is oil on artists card-stock and measures 9.5 x 7 inches. The work is signed by DeForest, and dated May 13, 1875 at lower right. The work is framed in an elegant, period appropriate frame, and ready to hang. Lockwood DeForest was born in New York in 1850 to a prominent family. He grew up in Greenwich Village and on Long Island at the family summer estate in Cold Spring Harbor. As was customary for a cultivated family in the Gilded Age, the DeForests made frequent trips abroad. Excursions to the great museums, which were prominent on the DeForests agenda, deepened the young Lockwood's familiarity with European painting and sculpture. Though he had begun drawing and painting somewhat earlier, it was during a visit to Rome in 1868 that nineteen-year-old DeForest first began to study art seriously, taking painting lessons from the Italian landscapist Hermann David Salomon Corrodi (1844–1905). More importantly, on the same trip, Lockwood met one of America’s most celebrated painters, (and his maternal great- uncle by marriage) Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), who quickly became his mentor. DeForest accompanied Church on sketching trips around Italy and continued this practice when they both returned to America in 1869. Early on in his career, de Forest made a habit of recording the date and often the place of his oil sketches, as to create a visual diary of his travels. Lockwood’s profession as a landscape painter can be primarily attributed to Frederic E. Church and his belief in the young artist’s talent. DeForest often visited Church in the Hudson River community of Catskill where, in addition to sketching trips and afternoons of painting, he assisted with the architectural drawings and planning of Olana. In 1872, DeForest took a studio at the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York. During these formative years DeForest counted among his friend’s artists such as Sanford Robinson Gifford (1823–80), George Henry Yewell (1830–1923), John Frederick Kensett (1816–72), Jervis McEntee (1828–91), and Walter Launt Palmer (1854–1932). Over the next decade DeForest experienced success as a painter. He exhibited for the first time at the National Academy of Design in 1872, and made two more painting trips abroad, in 1875–76 and 1877–78, traveling to the major continental capitals but also the Middle East and North Africa. His trip to the Middle East and the library at Church’s home, Olana, established his interest in design during his mid-twenties. From about 1878 to 1902, landscape painting was overshadowed by his activities and preoccupation with East Indian architecture and décor, a style that became quite fashionable in late nineteenth century America. From 1879-1883, de Forest founded Associated Artists along with Louis Comfort Tiffany, Candace Wheeler...
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Materials

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Previously Available Items
Synopsis of Indian Hieroglyphics Pl. 59
By Seth Eastman
Located in Milwaukee, WI
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Seth Eastman art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Seth Eastman art available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Seth Eastman in lithograph, engraving, oil paint and more. Not every interior allows for large Seth Eastman art, so small editions measuring 16 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of and Thomas Moran. Seth Eastman art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $475 and tops out at $65,000, while the average work can sell for $475.

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