Post by Californian on Oct 31, 2018 18:10:31 GMT -5
Peter Rindisbacher (12 April 1806 – 12 August or 13 August 1834) was a Swiss artist who specialized in watercolors and illustrations dealing with First Nation tribes of mid-Western Canada and the United States, mostly depictions of the Anishinaabe, Cree and Sioux, usually in group action or genre scenes.He seldom did individual portraits; however, he painted himself into a few interior tipi scenes, usually smoking a pipe. He commonly referred to the tipis as tents, such as in the title "Inside a Skin Tent". Peter Rindisbacher was born in 1806 on his family's farmstead "Luchsmattli" near the village of Eggiwil (Emmental Region), Canton Bern, Switzerland. In 1821, when Rindisbacher was 15 years old, he emigrated together with his parents and siblings to North America - to what was then called Western Canada. The family had been recruited by an agent of the Red River Colony, established by the Earl of Selkirk, to settle the area located near present-day Winnipeg, Manitoba. Lord Selkirk's land grant, called Assiniboia, was administered by a governor and council but, as all the colony's officials had connections with the Hudson's Bay Company, the colony was effectively an arm of Hudson's Bay's operations. The colony faced difficulties due to a disastrous flood of the Red River, on the eastern boundary of North Dakota north to Lake Winnipeg, which led to damaged crops and starvation.The Rindisbacher family relocated to Wisconsin in 1826, and in 1829 settled permanently in St. Louis, Missouri. From the age of fifteen until his death at the age of 28 in 1834, possibly of cholera, Rindisbacher was a producing artist. He began working with charcoal as a young boy, with the encouragement of his father. He was apprenticed to artist Jakob Samuel Weibel of Bern, Switzerland receiving one year of formal training and accompanying the latter on trips to the Berner Oberland and the southern Swiss state Ticino. Rindisbacher executed sketches and watercolors of his family's journey from Europe to western Canada, life and company officials in the Red River Colony, and Indians and animals in west-central Canada and the Midwestern United States, including the Chippewa and Metis people living along the Red River Trails. At age twenty-three, upon moving to St. Louis, Rindisbacher established an artist's studio, where he also produced illustrations for magazines and book covers, and contributed to the History of the Indian Tribes of North America collection.
