Bodmer_Publication

He found a suitable person in Karl Bodmer, a Swiss draftsman born in Zurich
on 11 February 1809. Bodmer had been trained as an artist, primarily in pencil and
watercolor, by his uncle, J. J. Meyer, 3 himself a well-known producer of Vedute in
Switzerland, from whom Karl’s brother, Rudolf, had learned the craft of etching.
The demand for such views, albums, and guidebooks was substantial – not only
among the growing numbers of travelers on the Grand Tour, but also among the
educated elite in Switzerland itself. But the supply was just as large, or even larger.
Bodmer went abroad, and from around 1828 onward he worked along the Rhine
and Moselle rivers. His views, which were being published in the region well into
the 1840s – for some of them his brother produced the etchings – were of high
quality, and it is not surprising that Wied noticed and ultimately engaged him.
Bodmer was extremely gifted, but he had been in danger of frittering away his
talent in the serial production of picturesque views for the upper segment of commercial
art. The journey with Wied and its processing in and into the aquatint atlas
provided the young painter with new and, above all, varied tasks. This journey is
regarded by many as the beginning of proper ethnology of the Great Plains, and
Bodmer had to serve this interest, but he also had to produce images of geological
formations, landscapes, and animals.
His pictures not only document what he saw, but also how he saw it. Despite
their impressive accuracy they are not “objective” but simultaneously lend expression
to the artist’s and his patron’s attitudes towards what is being represented.
Alongside Wied’s interests, other concerns of his are given space: a “cute” mouse
(thus Wied’s comment) which is not by Bodmer, turns into an aesthetic object.
Depictions of a beaver family or bears at play anticipate the representations of
animals, both realistic and anthropomorphic, that Bodmer produced after his
return from America in great numbers. (It is not even clear whether his bear sketch
actually belongs into the American context – if it does, it heralds the tendencies of
his later oeuvre at an early point in time.) Rock formations become picturesque
decoration, and nature is either made to look quite untouched and original, or
rendered as a kind of Biedermeier frame for human dwellings.
Bodmer develops a wide range of subject matters and a broad scope of aesthetic
perspectives with the help of various European conventions. The variety of effects
that he achieves in this manner is increased by a further factor. The illustrations to
the Travels were published in five separate series in different price ranges: two
in black-and-white on different kinds of paper, two that mixed black-and-white
and colored prints, also on two papers, and a deluxe edition consisting entirely of
colored prints. In the course of printing, different states of the same image
emerged. Some of the black-and-white prints were colored later, in inferior quality.
From the original plates, two series of reprints were produced in the twentieth
century. Moreover, the smaller vignettes 4 in particular were preserved in different
ways: as untrimmed sheets that were sometimes bound as books or placed singly
in front of the appropriate chapter in the travel journal. Thus, the impression that
an individual image makes on today’s viewer depends on the print’s material form
and the quality of production. But it obviously also depends on Bodmer’s artistic
intent and skill. In a tableau like Tab. 25, for example, we see how the effect of an
image can change completely in the transition from sketch to print. Or, we see how
the representation of a tributary of the Ohio River comes quite close to that of a
riverscape in Brazil produced shortly before – an image that Bodmer and Wied
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