Karl Bodmer

born Zurich, Switzerland, 1809; died Barbizon, France, 1893

BiographyKarl Bodmer was born in Zurich, Switzerland, and lived in Europe except for one expedition to America to accompany Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied and record his journey up the Missouri River from 1832 to 1834. The party left from St. Louis in the spring of 1833 and eventually made it as far as Fort McKenzie in present-day Montana. On the journey Bodmer produced many portraits of Native Americans and notably sketched scenes of an Assiniboin attack on a camp of Blackfoot people living at Fort McKenzie as well as the scalp dance of the Minatarres (Hidatsa). When the Prince’s party spent the winter of 1833–34 at Fort Clark he also became the last artist to paint the Mandans before a devastating smallpox epidemic. Bodmer is known for his exceptional draftsmanship and was able to depict his native subjects with striking exactitude. In the 1840s, his work appeared as 82 aquatints in Prince Maximilian’s published account of his journey into the American Frontier. After returning to Europe, Bodmer settled permanently in Barbizon near Paris.

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