David's Sabine Women in the Wild West

University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for Spring 1982 David's Sabine Women In The Wild West Rena N. Coen Saint Cloud State University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Coen, Rena N., "David's Sabine Women In The Wild West" (1982). Great Plains Quarterly. 1654. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1654 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. DAVID'S SABINE WOMEN IN THE WILD WEST RENAN. COEN When one considers the body of mid-nine did the men. References to Christian icon teenth-century paintings of the American West, ography, classical sculpture, and, above all, one is struck by the place of women, especially prints and engravings after European master white women, in them. In the large majority pieces seem more evident in the few paintings of cases, from George Catlin and Seth Eastman involving women than in those describing the to Frederic Remington and Charles Russell, adventures of their husbands. This difference women are conspicuous by their absence. We may be due to the fact that it was myth rather know that many women did go west with than reality that dominated the pictorial pres their husbands, striving to maintain some sem ence of women-a myth underscored by the blance of the civilization they knew in the notion that, while men engaged in such manly rough and primitive conditions of army posts sports as hunting and exploring and clearing and frontier settlements. But they were an the wilderness, it was the women who personi anomoly in such environments; in the popular fied the advance of civilization into it. Further nineteenth-century view, women, at least more, the heroic effort of settling into an alien "good" women, were perceived as fragile crea environment and overcoming the emotional tures, gentle and delicate, who would wither and physical hardships inherent in such a and die under the harsh conditions of frontier transplantation was not lost on the artists of life. Perhaps this attitude explains a tendency the American West. Thus, in varying degrees, on the part of contemporary painters to picture it is in these two roles-as transmitter of cul them in rather more academic terms than they ture and heroine of westward expansion-that we must consider the image of the white wom an in the frontier West. Engravings after J acques-Louis David's Sabine Women of 1799 (Fig. 1), illustrating a classic Rena N. eoen is professor of art history at Saint Cloud State University. She has a special story of reconciliation brought about by heroic interest in the art of the American frontier. women who had established roots in an alien Among her publications is Painting and Sculp land, served as an important artistic source ture in Minnesota, 1820-1914 (1976). for images of the pioneer women. Generally 67 68 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1982 FIG. 1. Jacques-Louis David, The Sabine Women. Louvre Museum, Paris. interpreted as an allegorical plea for an end to with particular preference being given to events the internecine bloodshed of the French Revo from ancient Greek and Roman history.1 lution, David's picture is an unusual one in the Two aspects of the Sabine women are in context of previous representations of the volved in the translation of that theme to the ancient legend, for rather than showing the American West. The first is a formal one in actual abduction of the Sabine women and the which echoes of David's painting, transmitted beginning of the Roman-Sabine war, David through prints and engravings of it, are to be chose instead to illustrate its peaceful conclu found ih the composition of an American paint sion. Indeed, the work reflected a growing ing. The second is a less tangible connection in revulsion for the excesses of the Reign of which the, idea, rather than the form, of David's Terror and a desire to end the violent conflict subject is to be found in the American exam that had overthrown the ancien regime . .It is ple. This article addresses both these aspects also a clear demonstration of what Robert of the Sabine women theme in the art of the Rosenblum has called the exemplum virtu tis, wild West. that is, a work of art, usually characterized by Although it is difficult to document the a veneration of feminine heroism, that was prevalence of engravings after David's Sabine intended to teach a lesson in virtue. From the Women in the United States in the early to mid late eighteenth century on, this type of paint nineteenth century, we do know that the ing began to dominate iconographical choice, medium itself was an important one in the DAVID'S SABINE WOMEN 69 development of the arts of the young republic. lent proclivities of the men through her opposi On the one hand it represented a technical tion to force and bloodshed and her pleading accomplishment, an exacting craft in which for peace. Furthermore, the love she evoked many American painters were trained. On the was thought of as a catalyst in blending disparate other it was the means by which young artists political and social elements into an established who had not had the opportunity to study commu.nity. As James Fenimore Cooper put abroad became familiar with European paint it in The Prairie (1827), his novel of westward ings. The influence of engraved reproductions migration, "woman was made to perform her after old and modern masters cannot be over accustomed and grateful office. The batriers of estimated in understanding the formation of prejudice and religion were broken through by the aesthetic perceptions of our native artists the irresistable power of the master passion; and of their visual memory. Moreover, at least and family unions, ere long, began to cement one specific reference to David's Sabine Women the political ties which had made a forced con appears in a list of engravings ordered by a junction between people so opposite in their Captain Killian for the drawing classes at the habits, their educations and their opinions.,,4 United States Military Academy in 1827.2 It Thus, in contemporary literature as in art, the is likely that the newly founded art academies woman was described as a civilizing influence in New York and Philadelphia also found the who, with the help of the children that she Sabine Women an appropriate lesson in both brought into the world, symbolized the transi drawing and proper sentiment for the students, tion from the wild, crude man's world to a who thus absorbed its message as well as its domestic and settled one, receptive to educa form just as they were absorbing classical tion, the arts, and an ordered society. It was sculpture from the plaster casts they were ex thus that she sank down roots and built the pected to copy.3 stable society that reclaimed the exiled males. The story of the Sabine women, told by John Mix Stanley'S Osage Scalp Dance of both Livy and Plutarch, offers some relevant 1845 (Fig. 2) is a paradigm of these ideas pre parallels to the story of the pioneer women sented in a dramatic picture of a group of in the American West. Like their American Osage warriors surrounding a captive white counterparts, the Sabine women had acquired woman and her small child. To twentieth a legendary aura as heroines of peace and century taste, it seems self-conscious and melo civilization, for after having been transported dramatic. But, like David's painting, Stanley's or in their case abducted-from their own land is notably a studio piece, posed and theatrical, to ancient Rome, they had nevertheless settled in the traditional grand manner of history down in the new land and begun to raise their painting of the eighteenth century. It reflected, families there. When, some years later, their however, an aesthetic dilemma that was typical Sabine menfolk came -to "rescue" or else avenge of its own period. That dilemma has been them, the leader of the Sabine women, Hersilia, described as a conflict between the priorities how wife of the Roman leader, Romulus, thrust of _the past and the demands of the present, herself between her husband and her Sabine between an artist's desire to describe contem brother, Tatius. Time had reconciled the porary events and his commitment to the women to their new home and made it accept classical ethos and the idealized sentiment of able to them. Herein lies the tie with nineteenth the grand tradition.5 Stanley's painting typical century paintings of the frontier West. Like ly resolves that conflict by an almost deliberate David's heroines, the pioneer woman was ex theatricalization of the western theme as a pected to accept her removal to a new land, to synthesis of allegory and reality, of idealization raise her children there, and to act as an agent and naturalism, and of the fresh and immediate of civilization and peace. Her mere presence vision of the artist with the demands of aca on the frontier was expected to tame the vio- demic painting.6 70 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1982 FIG. 2. John Mix Stanley, Osage Scalp Dance. National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian I nstitu tion.

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