G.A. Anderson Repoussé Copper Relief, Treaty with the Sioux, General Miles

G.A. Anderson "A Treaty with the Sioux Indian's [sic] '18 .' From General Miles Memoirs '1912'" repousse copper relief plaque, n.d. Signed at lower left and titled at center. A hand-hammered copper plaque worked in repoussé, with chased and scored line detail, showing a meeting on the northern Plains. Two mounted frontiersmen in slouch hats sit on the left, one carrying a cartridge belt and a rolled bedroll. Facing them is a chief in a full feather bonnet, his hand raised, perhaps as a gesture of parley, beside a pennant on a staff. Next to him rides a companion in a horned headdress. A row of figures, probably a massed war party, stands on the horizon. In the foreground a winding trail runs through stippled brush, rocks, and yucca tufts, and a ruled border frames the whole scene. Lettering at the lower edge reads "By G.A. Anderson" and "A Treaty with the Sioux Indian's 18__ From General Miles Memoirs 1912". The space for the treaty year was left blank, so the date was never finished. The inscription invokes General Nelson A. Miles (1839 to 1925). After the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, Miles became the army's most persistent field commander against the Lakota and their Cheyenne allies. Over the winter campaigns of 1876 and 1877 he forced the surrender of many bands, and he followed Sitting Bull's people to the Canadian border. In 1890 he commanded the Division of the Missouri during the Ghost Dance crisis and the tragedy at Wounded Knee. He went on to serve as Commanding General of the United States Army from 1895 to 1903. Miles published two autobiographies. The first, "Personal Recollections and Observations of General Nelson A. Miles" (1896), was heavily illustrated, partly by Frederic Remington. The second, "Serving the Republic" (1911), followed in a much plainer format. The "1912" on the plaque falls just after the later book appeared, but no matching illustration has been found in it. The image may have been adapted from an illustration in the earlier book, from a reprint, or from a magazine. It may also simply be the maker's own design. Either way, it belongs to the early twentieth-century taste for hammered copper pictures. Arts and Crafts manuals of the period taught amateur and professional metalworkers to raise relief from the back of the sheet and sharpen the detail from the front, and this plaque shows both steps. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 206096

Estimate:£186.42

View all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorAsian Art