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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

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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.

In his written description of the scene, purpose of striking terror into the hearts of Stanley made a point of emphasizing its play­ the captives." But the Osage chief is very much acting qualities. He was familiar with the Osage a noble savage: Stanley's account continues, Indians and their tribal rituals, for he had "a warrior [is 1 in the act of striking the woman traveled extensively among them and, in 1842, with his club, his chief springs forward and had even established a temporary painting arrests the blow with his spear.,,7 studio near Fort Gibson in the Oklahoma There was still another idea in the air at the Territory. In the catalogue accompanying the time that disposed the painters of the American exhibition of his Indian pictures at the Smith­ scene to think of westward expansion in terms sonian Institution in 1852, he noted that the of epic European paintings, especially those of "wild Indians do not scalp captive white David. This was the concept of Manifest Des­ women and children but merely hold them tiny, set forth by an editor of the Illinois until they are ransomed." He then went on to Gazette in 1824 as a destiny which "Greece describe the Osage Scalp Dance as a staged and Rome, in the days of their pride, might affair in which "the chief and warriors, after have envied, ... the destiny of regenerating by having painted themselves . . . to the most our example a fallen world and restoring to hideous appearance, encircle their captives." man his long lost rights.,,8 It was not long Then, "at a tap on their drums, they com­ before this concept was invoked as moral mence throwing themselves into the attitudes justification for the expansion westward and such as each one's irnaginationsuggests as the for the right of the white race to take over the most savage, accompanied by yells, for the lands of the benighted savages of the West. DAVID'S SABINE WOMEN 71

Few, of course, reached the rhetorical heights can hardly display. Though this female captive of William Gilpin, soldier, explorer, territorial does not intercede on her own behalf, as governor of Colorado, and ardent advocate of Hersilia, the leader of the Sabine women does, Manifest Destiny, whose presentation to Con­ her very helplessness does the trick. Just in gress in 1846 on the subject merely reflected the nick of time, and even repeating the gesture a national view. "The untransacted destiny of and pose of Hersilia, the Osage chief behind the American field," he declared, "is to subdue the captive wards off with his spear the threat­ this continent, to rush over its vast field to the ened blow of his companion's tomahawk. It Pacific Ocean . . . to establish a new order in should be noted, however, that this rescuing human affairs, to set free the enslaved ... to Indian, though discreetly tatooed, wears none teach old nations a new civilization ... to em­ of the body paint or animal skins decorating blazon history with the conquest of peace, to his more ferocious-looking companions. Be­ unite the world in one social family, and to neath his bear-claw necklace, he wears instead shed a new and resplendent glory upon man­ a silver presidential medallion hanging like a kind.,,9 There is no doubt that in achieving protective icon above the white woman. Such these exalted ends the white woman was the medallions, bearing the likenesses of former instrument of social unification, who would presidents, were given as gifts by the United prove, through her tender and gentle nature, States government to tribal chieftains whose the moral superiority of white society. Further­ attitudes and actions it wished to reward. This more, by retaining her innocence even in a cor­ trinket alone would, therefore, testify to the rupt male society, she could extend the bless­ civilizing influence of white culture, which had ings of Christianity, white civilization, and already touched the Osage chief and, indirect­ peace to a similarly uncorrupted noble savage. ly, rescued his white captives. In this half-mythic character, as arbiter of peace No such influence is evident, however, and guardian of morals, she echoed the role of among the savages who attack a white woman the Sabine women. in a painting that may well have provided Stanley's picture describes a preliminary inspiration for the Stanley picture. John Van­ aspect, as it were, of the white woman's civiliz­ derlyn's The Death of Jane McCrae (Fig. 3) of ing influence. Though the frontier is still 1804 recounts an event that took place during fraught with danger for the "weaker sex," her the Revolutionary War. The story is simple, mere presence appeals to the protective in­ brief, and to the point. Jane McCrae one day stincts of at least some of the males and thus left the safety of the stockade of Fort Edwards provides the impetus for civilized life. The in western New York State to meet her lover, a painting even conveys a covert religious mes­ young soldier in the army of General Burgoyne. sage, as is often the case in portrayals of the Alas, poor Jane! With her lover almost in sight, white woman in the western wilderness, for the she was waylaid by two fierce Indians, who sacred purity of a Raphael madonna is sug­ scalped her. This event became a cause ce1~bre, gested in the captive's pose and in the half­ told and retold in many primitive copies of naked infant who clings to her. Her white Vanderlyn's painting and in popular prints and dress, unsullied even after her capture on a ballads. Despite its later bowdlerization, how­ wild frontier, her sheltering gesture over the ever, The Death of Jane McCrae still had good child, and even her obvious helplessness project academic sources in European art. It was a nineteenth-century image of innocence and painted in Paris only five years after David's female virtue. Nevertheless, it might be noted Sabine Women, and David's influence is ap­ that the bare-bottomed infant, who has some­ parent in the struggling figures of Jane McCrae how lost his knickers on the prairie, reflects a and her captors. Though her stage was the typical nineteenth-century taste for a kind of wilderness of upper New York State rather than chaste eroticism that the female, in this case, ancient Rome, and though, unlike the Sabine 72 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1982

women (or Stanley's heroine), Jane McCrae failed to soothe the violent proclivities of the male antagonists, her portrayal, like that of the Sabine women, suggested epic events de­ scribed in classical terms. Not only are the poses of the Indians based on classical statuary, but even their garments, despite their brevity, more nearly suggest Roman costume than the ordinary attire of Mohawk warriors. Jane her­ self, kneeling helplessly at their feet, is a dying Niobid transplanted from ancient Greece to the western New York woodlands. An amalgam of classical sources and religious imagery is to be found in another epic paint­ ing of westward expansion that hints at the message-though it does not repeat the form­ of the Sabine women. This is George Caleb Bingham's Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap (Fig. 4). The picture, painted in 1851, strongly suggests FIG. 3. John . Vanderlyn, The Death of Jane the traditional Christian symbolism of the McCrae. Courtesy Wadsworth Atheneum, Hart­ flight into Egypt, for the pioneer group is ford, Connecticut. dominated by a chastely draped Madonna-like

FIG. 4. George Caleb Bingham, Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap. Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis, Missouri. DAVID'S SABINE WOMEN 73

woman on a white horse, forming the apex of the pyramidal composition. By implication this madonna is also Hersilia, for it is obvious that under her influence civilization and peace will reign in the new land. Daniel Boone, who occupies the traditional place of Joseph in representations of the flight into Egypt, has changed his costume for this particular west­ ward trek. Instead of his usual garb of rough animal skins and coonskin cap, Boone wears a gentleman's suit on which only a discreet buckskin fringe refers to his role as wilderness scout and hunter. As if to lend further author­ FIG. 5. John Cast, Westward Ho! (Manifest ity to the composition, classical imagery is Destiny). Through the courtesy of Harry T. also evoked in the way the striding Boone Peters, Jr . . recalls the classical figure of the Doryphoros, and the Louvre's Jason or Cincinnatus is sug­ gested by the man stopping to tie his moccasin eries, in that Victorian taste for a quasi-innocent at the left.10 Of course, the landscape back­ eroticism, now reveal a good deal more than ground is far from David's neoclassic interpre­ they need to. This voluptuous female, who tation of ancient Rome. Bingham's stage is floats so decorously westward, is not only a pure nineteenth-century romanticism, from the symbol of civilization but the moral justifica­ craggy mountains and deep chasms to the tion for westward expansion or Manifest blasted trees and the ominous, shadowy deHle Destiny. Through her the benefits of culture that symbolizes the dangers of the new life and modern technology are brought into the in the West. One patch of light, however, wilderness. In one hand the floating lady car­ picks out the pioneers and shines on them, as ries a large volume entitled simply "school though nature, or nature's god, blesses their book," while with the other she gracefully courageous march from the green and sunny drapes a telegraph wire across a row of poles hills behind them to the wild and barren land stretching all the way to the eastern seaboard. ahead. In this painting, Christian iconography, Before her majestic advance, wild animals classical sculpture, romantic landscape, and are doomed to extinction, benighted savages even a touch of Victorian primness blend to must accept domesticity, and industrial prog­ form an image of civilization advancing into ress and Christian virtue preside over the settle­ the wilderness. ment of the West. A far more explicit, if also more primitive, Two paintings by William T. Ranney illus­ expression of the same idea occurs in a small trate a further extension of the Sabine women's painting attributed to John Gast, who did a message, if in more diluted form. The Pioneers number of prints for Currier and Ives. Entitled of 1850 (Fig. 6) endows the pioneer family Westward HoI (Manifest Destiny) (Fig. 5) and with a genre quality as they advance in a cara­ dated 1872, it reveals a group of Indians, a van of covered wagons through an empty and herd of bison, and an angry bear being pushed desolate plain. But if the modern-day Hersilia ever westward-indeed, right off the picture has shed her classical draperies, she still ad­ plane-by a covered wagon, a group of pros­ vances in her contemporary dress toward the pectors, a stagecoach, a railroad train, and new land that waits to receive her brand of a farmer plowing a field. Above this group domesticity and family virtues. For the sake of flies an allegorical female figure, a nineteenth­ the children who ride with their grandmother century Hersilia, whose flowing classical drap- in the wagon behind her, peace and domestic 74 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1982

FIG. 6 (upper left). William T. Ranney, The Pioneers. Present owner and location unknown. FIG. 7 (lower left). William T. Ranney, Prairie Fire. Courtesy Mrs. Elizabeth Moran, Paoli, Pennsylvania. FIG. 8 (upper right). George Caleb Bingham, Martial Law, or Order No. 11. Courtesy State Historical Society of Missouri. tranquility will characterize the new civiliza­ tion in the West, just as it did when the Sabine women settled in ancient Rome. cio's Expulsion from Eden, painted around Prairie Fire of 1848 (Fig. 7), also by William 1427 in the church of Sta. Maria del Carmine T. Ranney, illustrates one of the many dangers in Florence, and that the old man to the left on the way. Here, in a manner more formally is the Apollo Belvedere transposed to the Mis­ reminiscent of David's Sabine Women, a cower­ souri frontier.11 There is more to it than that, ing woman and child kneel in the foreground however, for again David's work is evident in while the men, in a frenzy of activity, struggle the pastiche that forms this overcomplicated to control the rearing horses and the still dis­ painting. Both David's Brutus of 1789 and the tant flames. The foreground composition, the Sabine Women of 1799 are suggested by the drama of the situation, and the stagy contrast group dominated by the heroic old man. of struggling men and horses grouped around Around him, in a pyramidal composition femininity and infancy suggest that Ranney, typical of Bingham, are clustered a number of too, may well have held an image of the Sabine pleading and fainting women, a child who Women in his visual memory. clings fearfully to his knees, and another Classical sculpture, Renaissance art, and woman who has thrown herself upon the body David's paintings may all lie behind another of her dead husband. In the shadows behind work by George Caleb Bingham involving white the bearded patriarch, and forming the apex women on the western frontier. In Martial Law, of the main pyramid, appears an equestrian or Order No. 11 of 1869-70 (Fig. 8), Bingham figure silhouetted against the sky. This is the illustrated a political act that had attempted to hated General Thomas Ewing who, during the remove a group of settlers from a new land Civil War's Kansas-Missouri skirmishes, en­ they had made their home. It has already been forced the order evicting the Missouri border pointed out that the two figures of a black settlers from their homes. The soldier at the man and a boy at the right are based on Masac- right, however, strikes a more heroic pose that DAVID'S SABINE WOMEN 75 reflects that of Romulus in David's Sabine dry, academic formula, divorced from its origi­ Women, while the black boy at the right nal meaning. When Charles Christian Nihl, the echoes a similarly placed figure in the French artist of California's gold rush, painted La painting. In this picture the women plead and Plaza del Toros in 1874 (Fig. 9), he retained weep, more like David's Brutus, perhaps, than the rough outlines of David's picture but none the Sabine women, while the defiant role of of its purpose. In a pastiche of European proto­ Hersilia is played by an old graybeard who tries types and a caricature of the Sabine Women, he to prevent the force of arms from evicting the presented a genre scene of boisterous activity. Missouri border settlers from their homes. It While two mounted vaqueros look on at the is as though the voice of moral authority has left, two others, much to the distress of their been transferred from the females to the mounts, display their daring horsemanship to active, if unsuccessful, intercession of old age. the delight of the girls looking on at the right. But this picture, just like the Sabine Women, In the background, customers pay to enter a is in a sense a vindication of squatters' rights, bullring while an old, wooden oxcart, filled in which age, symbolizing the passage of time, with newcomers, enters the scene. Oblivious to is as important in the settlement of Missouri their surroundings, an amorous couple play as it was in the settlement of the kidnapped for a kiss, while above them the young oxcart Sabine women in ancient Rome. drover flings out his arms in a meaningless One final painting deserves to be men­ repetition of Hersilia's dramatic gesture. There tioned because it illustrates the degeneration of is a:lso a motley group of al fresco diners in­ David's composition as it increasingly became a cluding blacks, Mexicans, a tortilla vendor, a

FIG. 9. Charles Christum Nahl, La Plaza del Toros. CoUection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Mrs. Silsby M. Spalding. 76 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SPRING 1982 priest, and even a bearded patriarch who example, sketched a Classical Head sometime would be more at home in an Old Testament between 1820 and 1835. This oil sketch, now scene than in a rowdy gold rush town. But in the collection of the Helen Foresman Spen­ even if the message of David's painting has cer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Law­ rence, represents a bust-length view of the been lost in Nahl's exaggerated description of Phrygian-capped equerry found at the right in life in pioneer California, his design illustrates David's Sabine Women. See Leslie Griffm, the persistence of David's composition in "John Neagle's Classical Head, A Print Col­ America and the influence it exerted on the lector's Exercise," Register of the Spencer young country's academic painters. Museum of Art, University of Kansas, vol. 5, As long as the frontier was where America no. 8 (1979): 18-36. felt its history was being made and its destiny 4. James Fenimore Cooper, The Prairie, fulfllled, the Sabine Women, illustrating a ed. by Henry Nash Smith (New York: Rine­ classical story of reconciliation brought about hart, 1950), p. 178. by heroic women who had established roots in 5. For a full discussion of this aspect of a new land, was not, after all, an inappropriate nineteenth-century painting, see Albert Boime, "Thomas Couture and the Evolution of Painting model. Once the nation's "Manifest Destiny" in 19th Century France," Art Bulletin 51, had been accomplished, with white settlements no. 1 (March 1969): 48-56. firmly established across the land and the 6. See Michael Fried, "Thomas Couture threat of hostile action on the part of the and the Theatricalization of Action in 19th native inhabitants completely removed, the Century French Painting," Artforum 8, no. 10 inspiration of David's picture no longer applied. (June 1970): 36-46, for a discussion of the When the noble Hersilia was transformed into same problem in France. a California coquette, it was time for the Sabine 7. [John Mix Stanley], "Portraits of women to vanish from the scene. North American Indians, with Sketches of Scenery, etc., Painted by J. M. Stanley," Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. NOTES 2, art. 3 (originally published 1852; Washing­ ton, D. c., 1862), p. 45. 1. Robert Rosenblum, Transformations in 8. John William Ward, Andrew Jackson, Late Eighteenth Century Art (Princeton, N.J.: Symbol for an Age (New York: Oxford Uni­ Princeton University Press, 1967), p. 56. versity Press, 1955), p. 133. 2. M. Killian to Capt. McKay, Quarter­ 9. Clark C. Spence, ed., The American master, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, Bill West: A Source Book (New York: Crowell, for engravings purchased in Paris on May 4, 1966), p. 111. 1827, Manuscript collection, U.S. Military 10. E. Maurice Bloch, George Caleb Bing­ Academy Library, West Point. It should be ham: The Evolution of an Artist (Berke­ noted that the bill refers to "Hersilia" rather ley: University of California Press, 1967), p. than to the Sabine Women. 128. 3. The Philadelphia artist John Neagle, for 11. Ibid., p. 221.