Bodmer_Publication

Instead, he moved to Paris where he joined a group of French landscape artists
living in Barbizon, in the forest of Fontainebleau. This artist colony became known
as the Barbizon School. It was founded around 1830 and continued to exist until
about 1870. It had decisive influence on European landscape painting and is today
looked upon as one of the main forerunners of Impressionism.
Despite acclaim as an artist and numerous awards, Karl Bodmer’s last years in
life were overshadowed by illness and financial worries. He died in 1893. After the
Second World War his original sketches and watercolors were rediscovered in
the castle library at Neuwied (Rhineland-Palatinate). Today the printing plates and
386 of Bodmer’s sketches and watercolors as well as Prince Maximilian’s related
writings are held by the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha (Nebraska). The collection
ranks as an American national heritage, and the originals rarely find their way back
to Europe – unfortunately not even as loans to the famous artist’s city of birth.
In the name of the City of Zurich I wish to thank all the people who have contributed
to this interesting and significant project. Their work and commitment
have made it possible to pay due tribute to Karl Bodmer’s unique oeuvre and grant
him the well-deserved honor on the occasion of his 200th anniversary.
Foreword
Denise Daenzer, Head Curator, North America Native Museum
In the age of digital photography, people holding sketchbooks or brush and
easel have become a rare sight. Thanks to memory cards with tremendous storage
capacities people tend to take pictures of everything they see, always with the
opportunity to instantly check whether they got the detail and the exposure right.
If not, they press the delete button and try again. At home or in the hotel room, the
photographs are processed on the computer until the image on the screen equals
the picture in their memory. Today printers are small enough to fit in a suitcase so
that travel albums tend to be completed and printed even before the journey has
actually ended.
What a difference to the conditions 175 years ago when the natural scientist
Prince Maximilian of Wied had to hire the young landscape painter Karl Bodmer to
record the Journey into the Interior of North America and their encounters with
American Indians in sketches and watercolors! The expedition lasted twenty-eight
months during which Prince Maximilian kept his diary, collected specimens from
nature and objects from Indians, while Bodmer produced more than four hundred
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