(Oil Painting) Buffalo Hunt

Book Description

San Francisco, 1867. Very Good. Buffalo Hunt - Rare Western Americana Painting by a 19th century San Francisco Jewish ArtistLEVY, David. Buffalo Hunt. Oil on board painting. [San Francisco] 1867. Painting measures 10 3/4 inches x 6 1/2 inches. In contemporary solid oak frame. Signed D. Levy 1867. Age toning and slight cracking of glaze as usual. Very Good Condition.David Saul Levy [b. NY 1838 d. 1922] is listed in the 1867 Great Register of the City of San Francisco as being a New Yorker employed as a barkeep on O’Farrell Street. The young man had obviously come west seeking a new life. Although further information is scant or unobtainable, his life as a “Sunday Painter” lives on in this remarkably vibrant image of a Plains Indian buffalo hunt. The style is modern, almost impressionistic, with its background rendered in soft focus. Levy was obviously a skilled artist both in form and composition.The time in which this work was created in of particular note. In 1867, the Civil War had ended only two years ago. The next great conflict (what has come to be called “The Indian Wars”) had only recently surfaced. America’s appetite for westward expansion was increasing daily as families shattered by the war sought to build new lives on land untainted by the bitterness of slave economics. Reports of “Indian aggression” on the Great Plains had been steadily appearing for several years in American newspapers, both titillating and terrifying readers on both coasts. At the same time, the symbol of the “noble savage” began to gain a place in our national consciousness. Custer’s defeat at the Battle of Little Big Horn did not occur until 1876 and the official “closing” of the American Frontier would not be widely recognized until after the heinous Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. The American Bison, once one of the most numerous quadrupeds in the world, was brutally and systematically hunted beginning in 1820. By 1870 the entire species was very nearly extinct. At the time of Levy’s painting in 1867, Congress had formally set up reservations in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) for the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaws, Creeks, and Seminoles). The remaining rebellious tribes had a few more years to roam but, like the buffalo, the end was nearing.PROVENANCE: Kennedy & Co. Rare Prints. 785 5th Avenue, NewYork. Inventory # 51936

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