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Photo © President and Fellows of Harvard College
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Gallery Text

The tilted head and discerning expression of this unspecified Anishinaabe leader poignantly reveals their personality and attests to their diplomatic role at the treaty proceedings. Seated in a leather upholstered chair, the sitter wears a blue frock coat, striped shirt with black cravat, delicate necklaces of cascading blue, and the smallest of the three sizes of U.S. face (peace) medals.The likeness is believed to represent a leader who served as a negotiator, translator, or elected witness for the Gichigamiwininiwag (the collective bands and sub-nations of the Lake Superior Chippewa) or the Gichi-ziibiwininiwag (Mississippi River Band of Chippewa). Research is ongoing to learn more about their possible name(s) and community.This is one of the few likenesses of Indigenous and Native delegates that Inman copied that was not translated into a corresponding print. The portrait did not appear in Thomas McKenney’s "History of the Indian Tribes of North Americ"a (1836–44) or Otto Lewis’s "The Aboriginal Portfolio" (1835).

Identification and Creation

Object Number
2023.201
People
Henry Inman, American (Utica, NY 1801 - 1846 New York, NY)
Title
Anishinaabe delegate to the 1826 Treaty of Fond du Lac; believed to be a Chippewa/Ojibwe diplomat and medal-holder from the Gichigamiwininiwag or Gichi-ziibiwininiwag
Other Titles
Former Title: Ojibwa Man
Classification
Paintings
Work Type
painting
Date
c. 1832-1834
Culture
American
Persistent Link
https://hvrd.art/o/333010

Location

Location
Level 2, Room 2200, European and American Art, 17th–19th century, The Emergence of Romanticism in Early Nineteenth-Century France
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Physical Descriptions

Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
76.2 x 64.1 cm (30 x 25 1/4 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History
Mark Hollingsworth and Edmund I. Tileston (Hollingsworth and Tileston Paper Company); to Edmund P. Tileston and Amor Hollingsworth; gift of their heirs to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 1882, transfer; to Harvard Art Museums, 2023

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, gift of the heirs of E. P. Tileston and Amor Hollingsworth, 1882
Accession Year
2023
Object Number
2023.201
Division
European and American Art
Contact
am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu
Permissions

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Publication History

  • A Festival of Western American Art at Hirschl and Adler, October 12-November 17, 1984, auct. cat., Hirschl & Adler Galleries (New York, 1984), p. 15, no. 2-27 or 2-28
  • Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. and Melissa Renn, American Paintings at Harvard, Volume One: Paintings, Watercolors, and Pastels by Artists Born before 1826, Yale University Press (U.S.) and Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge and New Haven, 2014), pp. 29, 292-94, cat. 249, ill.
  • Cristina Morilla, "Conservation as Cultural Practice: The Portrait Collection of Indigenous Delegates by Henry Inman", Studies in Conservation (March 21, 2024), passim, fig. 1
  • Cristina Morilla and Studies in Conservation, Conservation as Cultural Practice: The Portrait Collection of Indigenous Delegates by Henry Inman, Studies in Conservation (https://doi.org/10.1080/00393630.2024.2328383, March 21, 2024), Figure 1, Page 2

Exhibition History

  • 32Q: 2200 19th Century, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 11/04/2024 - 08/04/2025

Verification Level

This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of European and American Art at am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu