Sold for: $21,250

PROVENANCE
Dominion Gallery, Montreal
A Prominent Montreal Estate

LITERATURE
Dennis Reid, Krieghoff: Images of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1999, a very similar 1858 canvas entitled Indian Trapper on Snowshoes reproduced page 175, and a very similar 1866 canvas entitled The Indian Hunter reproduced page 184, both in the Thomson Collection, Art Gallery of Ontario

Indian Hunter on Snowshoes was painted during the time Cornelius Krieghoff lived in Quebec City from 1853 to 1863. First Nations peoples were seen in the city and the surrounding countryside, where the men at the Huron Village of Lorette, 13 kilometres away up the St. Charles River, continued to hunt and trap. Krieghoff often observed them, and he and his friends hired them as guides for their hunting and fishing trips. Small portraits such as this one, staged in a landscape setting, were popular with local merchants and British military officers as remembrances of time spent in Canada.

Krieghoff was known for his attention to detail and his authentic portrayals of the clothing of Indigenous people. This hunter is wearing a red tam and a Hudson’s Bay blanket coat tied with a red sash, characteristic of the people of Lorette and Caughnawaga who hunted in the Laurentians. Elements such as the pipe, tasseled moccasins and snowshoes are finely painted. The romanticized landscape, with mountains and an expansive sky with billowing cloud effects rising into a pale blue firmament, exemplifies Krieghoff’s sublime mastery of atmosphere.

Two similar and iconic paintings of the solitary Indigenous hunter reside in the Thomson Collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars