Indian Maiden by Proctor
Spotlight on Indian Maiden by Proctor Date: January 2018 EI Presenter: Tina Heffernan Year/Medium: 1926 Bronze Artist: Alexander Phimister Proctor (1860-1950) Title of Piece: Indian Maiden and Fawn “I am eternally obsessed with two deep desires-one, to spend as much time as possible in the wilderness, and the other, to accomplish something worthwhile in art.” – A. P. Proctor Five points of interest about this artist: 1. Called himself the “Sculptor in Buckskin”. His most famous works include the horse in General Sherman in Central Park, the Pioneer Mother here at the University of Oregon, and the Seven Mustangs at the University of Texas at Austin. Proctor’s tribute to Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Rider, was the subject of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s first ever educational film on the work of a sculptor. It resides in Portland. 2. He was a contemporary of Frederic Remington and Charles Russell, but chose to work on a more monumental/life size scale and allow his smaller pieces to be more accessible to everyday people. 3. Proctor was born in Canada and grew up in Colorado where he developed a love for hunting and sketching wild animals. In 1885, he sold a gold claim and with the proceeds went first to New York to attend the National Academy of Design and then on to Paris to continue his studies. His academic training made him as comfortable in international artistic circles as he was hunting grizzlies in the Rocky Mountains. 4. As a hunter he always was careful to measure, draw, and sometimes dissect the animals that he killed.
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