[Gibbs, George]:

$37,500 · Offered by William Reese Company

[PASTEL PAINTING OF A SCENE IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, PROBABLY THE COLUMBIA RIVER, WITH INDIANS LANDING CANOES ON A RIVERBANK, AND SNOWCAPPED MOUNTAINS IN THE ... This beautiful painting of three Native Americans laying up two canoes on the bank of a river in wooded mountainous terrain is the work of George Gibbs (1815-73), ethnographer, mapmaker, geologist, historian, attorney, and, for nearly twelve years, an explorer, artist, and administrator in the Pacific Northwest. The scene is likely the western entrance to the Columbia River Gorge, with the Cascade Mountain Range in the near distance. The painting shares several geographic and artistic touchpoints with the annotated on-the-spot drawing from 1850 that Gibbs made farther east on the river at Oak Point, illustrated in David Bushnell's Drawings by George Gibbs in the Far Northwest, 1849-1851. The painting is signed in a slightly stylized version of the signature found throughout Gibbs' personal and professional papers.Gibbs learned to paint while attending the Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts, the first experimental prep school in the country, founded by future historian George Bancroft and Joseph Green Cogswell, later director of the first great public library in the United States, the Astor Library. Gibbs grew up surrounded by great American art. "Gibbs' father commissioned Gilbert Stuart to paint Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe; these portraits hung in Gibbs' childhood home at Sunswick

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