Lot 438: Henry H. Cross

Henry H. Cross Illinois/California (1837-1918) PORTRAIT OF NEGRO BOY oil on canvas, framed signed & dated: middle left, HH Cross, 1895 H27" W22 1/2" *Artist biography: Born in Flemingville, New York, Henry Cross became a noted painter of Indian portraits and racehorses. He was an adventurous person who ran away as a teenager several times to join a circus. At age sixteen, he traveled to Paris where he studied with animal painter Rosa Bonheur between 1853 and 1855. Returning to the United States, he earned a living painting animals on the sides of wagons and traveled West, again working with a circus. For the first time he saw Indians. His experiences during this time stimulated his interest in Western themes. In 1862, after having had a portrait studio in Chicago for two years, he moved to Minnesota during the Sioux uprising with the intent of painting the Indians President Abraham Lincoln had sentenced to death for the massacre of white settlers. During this period, he learned to speak the Sioux language, and Buffalo Bill Cody referred to him as "the greatest painter of Indian portraiture of all time" (Harmsen, WESTERN AMERICANA). Cross left a rich legacy of portrayals of Indian genre and their interaction with white military civilization. Among his subjects was a portrait of Sioux Chief Red Cloud. In the late 1880s, he began to paint Indian ceremonies and in the 1890s, visited Hopi pueblos in Arizona and painted the Snake Dance. The Gilcrease Institute of Tulsa, Oklahoma has one of the most comprehensive collections of his Indian portraits, and other collections are in the Chicago Historical Society and the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.