Born:
1818
Philadelphia, PA

Died:
1867
New York City

Biography:
Important early painter of Indian and frontier life on the Great Plains

Deas, grandson of the Revolutionary War leader Ralph Izard, was exposed to art as a visitor at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art and in Sully’s studio while receiving his general education from John Sanderson.  He failed to gain appointment to West Point in 1936, when the Hudson River outdoor life attracted him more than life as a cadet.  He then spent two years at the National Academy in New York City, exhibiting beginning 1838 “a variety of cabinet pictures drawn chiefly from familiar life.”  During a visit to Philadelphia in 1838, he was enthralled by an exhibition of Catlin’s Indian paintings:  “To visit the scenes of Nature’s own children, to share the repast of the hunter and taste the wild excitement of frontier life.”

In 1840, Deas left the East to visit his brother at Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, only 10 years after Seth Eastman, at the same time as Stanley, and 10 to 20 years before the better-known Western artists.  He  collected sketches of Indians and frontier scenery.  “In passing from lodge to lodge, the most extraordinary incidents presented themselves, and in the stillness of the moonlit nights, the echoes of the Indian lover’s flute blent with the battle-chant or the maiden’s shrill song.”  In the winter of 1841 he visited Fort Winnebago, Fort Snelling, St. Anthony’s Falls, and the Sioux.  He had a permanent studio in St. Louis as his headquarters.  In 1844, when he traveled to the Pawness, he was nicknamed “Rocky Mountain” because he dressed “like a fur hunter” and “he could go where he pleased.  Mr. Deas seemed to possess the whole secret of wining the good graces of the Indians.  Whenever he entered a lodge it was with a grand flourish so that the whole lodge would burst out into a roar of laughter.”  Eighteen of Deas’s frontier works were exhibited at the National Academy in New York City.  Others were shown at the American Art-Union.  He returned to New York City in 1847, only to suffer a mental breakdown that affected his painting.  Despite his huge successes that started from the time he was 20, only a very few canvases have survived.

Resource: SAMUELS’ Encyclopedia of ARTISTS of THE AMERICAN WEST, Peggy and Harold Samuels, 1985, Castle Publishing