An Osage Warrior

Pavel Petrovich Svinin

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Russian nobleman Svinin entered foreign service and traveled widely. From 1811 to 1813 he served as a member of a Russian diplomatic mission to the United States and journeyed up and down the East Coast. Along the way, he sketched and painted landscapes and scenes of everyday life. He left the States in June 1813 and published an illustrated memoir of his visit. "A Picturesque Voyage in North America" (1815) includes a chapter on his experiences in the company of American Indians—most likely fabricated, as Svinin was a notoriously unreliable memoirist. His illustrations include copies after portraits by Charles Balthazar Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin, who had drawn American Indians from life in 1805–7. "An Osage Warrior" is derived directly from Saint-Mémin’s portrait "Osage Warrior II" (1807; Winterthur Museum, Delaware).

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art