TitleA Chief of the Multnomah Tribe
Artist
Hermon Atkins MacNeil
(1866 - 1947)
Date1905
MediumBronze
DimensionsOverall: 37 x 12 x 10 in.
SignedSigned on rear base: "H.A. MacNeil / '05; Roman Bronze Works, New York".
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, March 4, 1907
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number75-S
Label TextThis figure is half of a full-sized bronze group, originally called Peace Signal, but eventually titled The Coming of the White Man, executed by MacNeil on a commission from David P. Thompson, a pioneer businessman of Portland, Oregon. The design for the group was finished by 1903, and was unveiled in 1907 in Washington Park, Portland, a gift of the heirs of the recently deceased Thompson to fulfill his desire to leave a fitting memorial to the city. The work represents the first confrontation of an unspecified chief of the Multnomah tribe of Oregon with the white man, or men, whose existence is suggested but not depicted. In the original composition the chief is accompanied by a Medicine Man, who displays the emotions of fear and suspicion not obvious in his erect and defiant companion. As Jean Holden wrote in 1903, "Superstitious, without experience, and without a common language, Multonomah [sic] meets the stranger like a brave man who feels the inviolability of the human soul and dares the rest. From the crown of his proud head to the sole of his well-planted foot, he shows no excitement. All trace of emotion is left to the tribesman at his side, who signals to the invader with the freshly-plucked branch of an oak." In its rich modeling and exploitation of a varied surface texturing, the group reveals MacNeil's years of Paris training. Compositionally, the work was pre-figured by "The Sun Vow" which is also a two figure Indian group.By 1905 MacNeil had authorized the Roman Bronze Works to produce casts of a reduced version of the chief, alone. As many as twelve of these were made; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in New York, have casts. No comparable castings of the subsidiary figure or of the original composition as a whole are known. Not all of the castings of Multnomah are dated as is the Academy's, suggesting this example may have been cast specifically for presentation to the organization.
Collections
- Past as Prologue Part I
