Study for Treaty with Native Americans (from Sketchbook)

Study for Treaty with Native Americans (from Sketchbook)

John Quincy Adams Ward

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ward, a student of Henry Kirke Brown, became known as the “Dean of American Sculpture.” In addition to his monumental bronze "Indian Hunter," installed in New York’s Central Park in 1869, he pursued several other American Indian subjects in the 1860s. This page from a sketchbook ,which provides an intimate look at the artist’s working methods, shows the leader of a group of Indians addressing a quartet of soldiers. This scene may be a historical depiction of the Treaty of Greenville, which took place in Ward’s native Ohio in 1795, when several local tribes ceded land to the U.S. Government and established a boundary between American Indian territory and lands open to Euro-American settlers.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Study for Treaty with Native Americans (from Sketchbook)Study for Treaty with Native Americans (from Sketchbook)Study for Treaty with Native Americans (from Sketchbook)Study for Treaty with Native Americans (from Sketchbook)Study for Treaty with Native Americans (from Sketchbook)

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.