H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-German@h-net.org (March 2005)

Brandon K. Ruud, ed. _Karl Bodmer's North American Prints_. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2004. xi + 382 pp. Illustrations, notes,
bibliographies, appendices. $150.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-8032-1326-3.

Reviewed for H-German by H. Glenn Penny, Department of History, University
of Iowa

Producing Transnational Images

 From 1832-1834, Prince Maximilian von Wied, accompanied by the artist Karl
Bodmer, traveled from Boston to St. Louis, up the Missouri river to Fort
McKenzie in Montana, and then back along the Missouri and Ohio rivers to New
York City. The goal of their odyssey was to visit Native Americans in the
areas still unsettled by the United States and record, in exacting
scientific detail, everything they could. The result was von Wied's famous
travel account and Bodmer's lavish illustrations of North American
landscapes and inhabitants.[1] Wied's account of the trip has received much
attention from scholars interested in European travel narratives,[2] but
Bodmer's illustrations have gained an almost hegemonic position in the
iconography of Plains Indians. Perhaps only George Catlin's drawings and
paintings have had greater circulation. One can find Bodmer's images (as
drawings, watercolors, etchings, and prints) in museums and libraries across
Europe and the United States, and they have been reproduced both legally and
illicitly in a range of books, periodicals, prints, posters, and calendars.
Most of the readers of this list would recognize one or another of these
images even if they have no knowledge of Bodmer and little interest in
Native Americans.

Although it has seen less attention, the history of these images is as
instructive for scholars as the scheme that produced them. If the trip is
characteristic of the transnational ventures of several generations of
Germans who sought to emulate Alexander von Humboldt by traveling abroad, so
too was the production of their two-volume narrative and the completion of
Bodmer's atlas. Just as Humboldt returned to Paris to write up his work, the
Swiss artist Bodmer turned to French engravers in Paris to help complete the
illustrations for his German patron's volumes, which were published in
German, French, and English editions. The originals, along with some of the
ethnological collections, found their way into major international art and
scientific institutions, and in 1962, much of this material (nearly four
hundred drawings and watercolors by Bodmer, a collection of books, and a
good deal of correspondence between Wied, Bodmer, and others) returned to
the Midwest when it became the property of the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha
Nebraska.

Brandon K. Ruud has produced an impressive volume that takes the Joslyn
collection as a starting point for exploring the history of the eighty-one
atlas prints Bodmer created for Wied's narrative. The volume includes a
useful introduction to the trip by Ron Tyler and an essay about the history
of Bodmer's prints by Ruud. These essays explain what becomes vividly clear
in the rest of the book: the plates took shape over a long period of time
(some eight years after the journey itself) and many of them went through
multiple revisions. The process of revision is fascinating. Many of the
images that have become regarded as authoritative snapshots of different
groups of Indians are actually compilations--scenes put together by Bodmer
in his Paris studio from multiple sketches, or at times from memory alone.
His plates were influenced by his patron, his publisher, his initial
audience, and by the hands of the many craftsmen who produced the
engravings. Wied remained in close contact with Bodmer during the
production, approving and disapproving even minute changes to the plates. He
was particularly critical of ethnographic details, but he was also
interested in the aesthetics of the plates, making a point to exclude
European artifacts and clothing from most of the portraits of Indians and
insisting on landscapes and individuals that were pleasing to the eye--a
point he became keenly concerned with after a rather bad review of Bodmer's
paintings at the 1836 Paris Exposition.

Once completed, the plates also took on lives of their own, circulating in
periodicals and books that are discussed by Tyler but also listed in detail
in appendix D. Indeed, the details of each plate make up the majority of the
book, which includes photographs of the illustrations (original water
colors, sketches, engravings, and initial and final printings) that were
used to produce the plates. The research involved in pulling together the
extant illustrations from institutions scattered across the United States
and Europe (listed in appendices A and B) must have been daunting. But the
final product is breathtaking. This is a treasure trove for art historians,
filled with meticulous detail, including even short biographies of engravers
involved in the production. But it is also of great value to the layman who,
after reading through the forty-eight tableaus and thirty-three vignettes,
could not help but come away with a sobering respect for the physical and
mental energies that went into producing the atlas. That, in fact, would be
a useful exercise for students in general. One could imagine using a half
dozen or more of these examples in the classroom as a means for stimulating
discussions about notions of authenticity, the production, reception, and
consumption of science and art in the nineteenth century, and the
transnational character of the social lives of the original paintings, the
plates, the books, and the images.

Although their rigorous efforts prolonged their project much more than
either man could have anticipated, and resulted in a volume of prohibitive
expense ($120, or roughly $2,856 today), Wied's commitment to science and
Bodmer's dedication to art produced what Alexander von Humboldt regarded as
one of the best volumes of its kind. Humboldt wrote to Wied, "there is no
other travel-book written in our language, which might be compared with this
publication that is so perfect in all its details." Impressed with Wied's
ethnography, Humboldt also regarded Bodmer's plates as peerless. He wrote
that he could not "find anything like [them] in other literary achievements,
with regard to beauty and reality.... How poor are the recent books of the
French about travels around the world, which had been published at the
expense of the government," compared to this book, which had the financial
support of Wied alone (pp. 20-21). Indeed, this was one of the last volumes
of its kind. Even as they were producing the atlas, Bodmer recognized the
potential of early photography and the cheap printing houses that were
beginning to produce nickel and dime literature, and he realized that his
efforts were already becoming outdated. There is, however, a quality to
these volumes that requires us to agree with Humboldt's assessment,
something that Ruud and his colleagues have made palpable with their book.

Notes

[1]. Maximilian von Wied and Karl Bodmer, _Reise in das innere Nord-America
in den Jahren 1832 bis 1834_, 2 vols. (Coblenz: J. Hoelscher, 1839).

[2]. Most recently: Harry Liebersohn, _Aristocratic Encounters: European
Travelers and North American Indians_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998).



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