biography of Charles DEAS (1818-1867)

Birth place: Philadelphia

Death place: NYC

Addresses: grew up in Philadelphia; NYC, mid-1830s-40; Wisconsin and St. Louis, MO, 1840-47; NYC, 1847-on

Profession: Genre, landscape, and portrait painter

Studied: briefly at NAD, mid-1830s

Exhibited: NAD,1838-49; American Art-Union; PAFA and Artists' Fund Society, 1840-44, 1852; Boston Athenaeum

Member: ANA, 1839

Work: PAFA; PMA; Shelburne (VT) Mus. FA (The Death Struggle"); Brooklyn Museum; MMA; BMFA"

Comments: Best known for his Romantic, dramatic scenes of frontier and Indian life on the Great Plains. Began as a painter of sporting and domestic genre scenes in NYC. In 1840, apparently inspired by an exhibition of Catlin"s paintings (at Catlin's Indian Gallery in NYC), Deas visited his brother out West, at Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien (WI). Fascinated with the Plains Indians, he remained in the region, establishing a studio in St. Louis and embarking on an approach to western subject matter that was different from those of his contemporaries Catlin and William Ranney. Deas chose moments of danger, conflict, and struggle, exaggerating movement and facial expression to enhance the drama of the scene. He enjoyed considerable success in the 1840s, sending paintings back East for exhibition and gaining patrons and friends in St. Louis. His work was also engraved and distributed to great success. Deas returned to NYC in 1847. Unfortunately, he suffered a mental breakdown in the early 1850s and spent his last 16 years in a mental asylum, where he died in 1867.

Sources: G&W; McDermott, Charles Deas: Painter of the Frontier"; Tuckerman; Baur, "Unknown American Painters of the 19th Century," 277-282; Cowdrey, NAD; Cowdrey, AA & AAU; Rutledge, PA; Swan, BA; Turner, "Early Artists"; American Art-Union, Circular, 1844-45. More recently, see Baigell, Dictionary; Gerdts, Art Across America, vol. 3: 39-40; P & H Samuels, 130; Muller, Paintings and Drawings at the Shelburne Museum, 57 (w/repro.); 300 Years of American Art, vol. 1, 180"