Hampton Institute Drawings - Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

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Nº23 War Dance

Ethnographic Notes

“These had been dancing war dance, them two black fallows/ are Indian soldier whips them when they dont dance, nice,/ Ka-what” (Artist’s inscription, recto)

“According to the text written by the artist, this drawing depicts a war dance. The mounted warrior at the upper left carries a shield bearing a protective design received in a dream, and the horse's tail is bound up for battle. The two figures in black at the right are the whip-bearers who are charged with insuring that everyone in the society who is sponsoring the dance does, in fact, dance.

In this drawing, Ka-what has kept to the tenets of traditional painting: no ground line exists nor is there any attempt at perspective. Figures are placed one above the other and, seemingly, at random. Unlike Nº22, there is no landscape here.” (p.38)

William S. Wierzbowski and Helen M. Mangelsdorf in Images of a Vanished Life: Plains Indian Drawing from the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1985.


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Provenance

Drawings made in 1879 by students at the Hampton Institute, Virginia. Donated to the Pennsylvania Academy of ...

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Document Info
Plate No: 38
Page No: 1982_X_178
Media: Pencil, colored ink, colored pencil on cream tagboard
Dimensions: 7 1/8 x 10 3/4 in
Custodian
Credit line: Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
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