Carl Ferdinand Wimar

born Sieburg, Germany, 1828; died St. Louis, Missouri, 1862

BiographyCarl Ferdinand Wimar was born in Siegburg, Germany, in 1828 and moved to St. Louis with his mother in 1844. He studied under French artist Leon Pomarede and opened his own studio in St. Louis around 1850. Wimar left St. Louis for Düsseldorf in 1852, where he studied with the painter Emanuel Leutze alongside other American artists like Albert Bierstadt. The work Wimar produced in Germany combined traditional European history painting with subjects from the American West, and he often chose to depict sensational, imagined scenes of confrontations between Native Americans and Anglo settlers. He returned to St. Louis in 1856 and journeyed west for the first time, traveling up the Missouri River in 1858 and 1859, collecting sketches and photographs of Native Americans. After Wimar actually came into contact with Native Americans his subjects became less romanticized and he focused more on the changing landscape and the effects that European colonization had on Native cultures.

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