PROVENANCE
Commissioned by the National Geographic Society
Sold sale of The National Geographic Collection: The Art of Exploration, Christie's New York, December 6, 2012, lot 71
Acquired from the above by the present Private Collection, BC

BIBLIOGRAPHIE
The National Geographic Magazine, Volume LXXXVI, Number 1, July 1944, page 86, reproduced figure VI
Matthew W. Stirling, National Geographic on Indians of the Americas: A color-illustrated Record, The National Geographic Society, Washington, D.C., 1955, reproduced page 86

In the first half of the twentieth century, American artist Wilfred Langdon Kihn was considered one of the foremost painters depicting First Nations life throughout the United States and Canada. In 1922, the young artist was contacted by Murray Gibbon, the publicity agent for the Canadian Pacific Railway, who was organizing a celebration to publicize the Kootenay region. Kihn was given passes to travel throughout Banff and British Columbia. Through Gibbon, Kihn was introduced to important Canadian ethnographer Marius Barbeau, who saw in Kihn’s direct and colourful imagery a more effective method of publicizing his interests in Indigenous life than using his own photographs.

In the summer of 1924, Barbeau invited Kihn to visually record the people and customs of various remote communities in British Columbia, in particular the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’un nations located along the Skeena River. The images Kihn produced were used by Barbeau to illustrate his book of Gitxsan oral histories The Downfall of Temlaham, published in 1928. Through this book and other projects, Barbeau sought to promote these remote communities as historic sites in an effort to preserve and keep the artifacts in place, rather than having them stripped of context and displaced to various museums around the world. Barbeau made repeated visits to the area, including in 1926 with A.Y. Jackson and Edwin Holgate, and later in 1927 with Kihn, Florence Wyle and Anne Savage.

The works produced by these artists, along with a selection of Kihn’s paintings from the expeditions, were included in the National Gallery of Canada’s 1927 Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art: Native and Modern. Organized by Barbeau, the show was radical in considering Indigenous Northwest Coast art alongside modernist painters such as Emily Carr and Lawren Harris.

This formative experience of exhibiting in the midst of Canada’s greatest artists brought Kihn renown for his ability to accurately depict Indigenous life using bold colours and strong compositions. His reputation was such that the National Geographic Society commissioned Kihn in 1935 to paint a series on the life of the First Nations people. This monumental project brought him from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the Arctic to Mexico, culminating in over 100 canvases and taking him 15 years to complete. The majority of the paintings are held in the National Geographic Society’s headquarters in Washington, DC, and are reproduced in the book Indians of the Americas, published by the society in 1955. In 2012, the Society held a sale to raise funds, divesting two of their Kihn paintings through Christie’s, one of which was this work depicting a Blackfoot band setting up teepees to make camp. The Blackfoot (or Blackfeet) people were united by a common language, and composed of many bands with flexible membership between them. A nomadic people, they lived and traveled in Montana, parts of Idaho and Wyoming and through Alberta, Saskatchewan and parts of British Columbia.

Today, Kihn’s works are held in the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Vancouver Art Gallery, among others.

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