Charles Deas

Charles Deas was born in Philadelphia in 1818 and received early training from artist John Sanderson. After failing to obtain an appointment to West Point in 1834, Deas moved to New York in hopes of being elected to the National Academy of Design. He was living in the city when George Catlin exhibited his Indian Gallery there in the 1830s. After seeing Catlin’s work Deas was inspired to paint the West himself, leaving for Fort Crawford in 1840. In his early trips west to Fort Winnebago and Fort Snelling, in present-day Wisconsin and Minnesota, Deas painted portraits of Native Americans. He then set up a studio in St. Louis in 1842. By the time he accompanied Major Clifton Wharton and Lieutenant J. Henry Carleton to the Pawnee villages on the Platte River in present-day Nebraska, Deas had begun dressing like a fur trapper, earning him the nickname “Rocky Mountains.” During this time the fur trappers also became a major subject in his work and his 1844 painting Long Jakes, Rocky Mountain Man earned him national acclaim. His work became increasingly melodramatic as time went on and he completed his last major painting in 1847. In 1848 he was committed to the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum in New York, where he was confined for the remainder of his life.