Trapper Making Escape from Blackfeet

Here Miller seems to be playing with the theme first introduced in Escaping from a War Party (CR# 150A) from the Stewart album. However, he has reduced two trappers to one and brought the trapper closer to the picture plane so that it is possible to see his expression more clearly. This trapper looks a little different than Miller’s typical brown haired, bearded figure with his long black hair and a mustache. Unlike the trappers in the earlier sketch, he leans down in his saddle as if to evade detection. His close proximity to the picture plane puts the viewer in the midst of the action, giving this sketch a sense of suspense not present in the others. With its bright colors and wealth of incidental detail, this sketch is closer stylistically to Miller’s work for William T. Walters. It is possible that this sketch was something he experimented with for the Walters commission, or it may have been an attempt to emulate the kind of dramatic scenes of Indian-white conflict that were popular in the work of Charles Deas in the mid-1850s.

Lisa Strong