Shannon's Fine Art Auctioneers is offering for public sale an important collection of over twenty-two western American bronzes. The auction will be held on October 28th, 2010, at Shannon's newly-expanded gallery in Milford, Connecticut.

Leading the collection is the model for Sherry Edmondson Fry's best-known public installation, the monumental statute of Chief Mahaska (White Cloud, 1784-1834) that stands in the courthouse square of Oskaloosa, Iowa.[1] The statute was commissioned in 1906 by James Depew Edmondson, a wealthy investor in western Iowa real estate, as a memorial to his father, William Edmondson. The elder Edmondson had served as both the first sheriff of Mahaska County and as a representative to Iowa's first general assembly. The statue was installed in front of an audience of 12,000 people on May 12th, 1908, to rousing critical acclaim.

Chief Mahaska is undoubtedly Fry's finest and most important work. No other examples are known.

Additional Bronzes

Works by Charles H. Humphriss (4), Allen Houser (2), Carl Kauba (10), Cyrus Edwin Dallin, Joseph Jacinto Mora, and Herman Atkins MacNeil complete Shannon's offering of western American bronzes.

Charles Humphriss specialized in capturing the Native American in moments of worship. Appeal to the Great Spirit and Appeal to Manitou, are among his two best-known sculptures depicting "the Indian's need to turn to the Great Spirit for help and deliverance."[2] Expressive and evocative, they reflect a yearning for peace shared by both sides of the frontier wars.

The theme of a religious call for peace is also taken up by Allen Houser in his sculptures, The Offering and Peace Prayer, and Herman MacNeil's A Primitive Chant to the Great Spirit. This trope was especially personal for Houser, who was half-Apache and whose father, Sam Ha-oz-ous, fought with Geronimo.[3] For MacNeil, the choice of subject was an attempt to connect more deeply with the Native American experience. He had met his model, Black Pipe, after the World Columbia Exposition in 1893.[4] The opportunity to work closely with a cooperative and capable model resulted in MacNeil's first commercial success.

Cyrus Dallin's On the Warpath and Joseph Jacinto Mora's Bronco Rider illustrate the most important quality necessary for survival in the hazardous West--courage. Born in Utah, Dallin came of age on the frontier during the last days of the Indian Wars. He grew up empathetic to the plight of Native Americans, and celebrated their bravery in resisting the wave of Amer-European culture. Like Frederic Remington's celebrated work, Mora's Bronco Rider is a direct metaphor for the pioneer's experience taming a vast and dangerous land.

Finally, Carl Kauba's Bison is a fine example of how the imagery of the American West translated overseas. Kauba likely never visited the United States and was inspired instead by the various illustrations and prints of the West available in Europe at the end of the 19th century.[5] His bison is an avatar of the Great Spirit--noble, powerful, and intimately connected with the land. Bison is accompanied by nine additional works by Kauba, all of which illustrate the Indian as a noble defender of his native land.

This exceptional collection of bronzes will be offered during Shannon's sale of American and European Fine Art on October 28th, 2010. Please visit www.shannons.com for additional information.

[1] See "Noble Savage in the Courthouse Square: Patronage and Legacy in Sherry Edmondson Fry's Mahaska," Ioway Cultural Institute (1998), http://ioway.nativeweb.org/history/mahaskaolson.htm. Many thanks to Mr. Greg Olson for his kind assistance in cataloging this lot.

[2] Patricia Janis Broder, Bronzes of the American West (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1973), 259.

[3] Broder, 310.

[4] Broder, 87.

[5] Broder, 221.