George Winter (artist)

Winter, the youngest of twelve children, was born on June 10, 1809, in Portsea, Portsmouth, England.[1][2] As part of "a cultured family," Winter grew up "in an art atmosphere from early childhood."[3] His early education took place in the local schools, but he also received private instruction and planned to continue art studies in London.[3][4] When Winter's father and five of his siblings immigrated to the United States, Winter and other members of the family remained in England. In 1826 Winter moved to London, where he lived with his brother, John, and spent the next four years painting reproductions of art exhibited in the city's museum and galleries. Winter may have tried to gain admission to the Royal Academy of Arts in London, but it appears that he never formally trained as a painter.[5][6]

In June 1830 winter immigrated the United States at the age of twenty-one. He exhibited one of his reproductions of J. P. Loutherbourg's Battle of Ascalon at the American Institute of the City of New York in October 1830, but studied art at the National Academy of Design in New York City.[7][8] Winter also exhibited his early work at the National Academy's annual art exhibitions in 1832, 1834, and 1835.[9] He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where his parents and other members of his family resided, in 1835. Winter opened an art studio, but found it difficult to make a living in Cincinnati as a portrait artist and illustrator. He closed the studio in 1837.[10]

In May 1837 Winter decided to visit Logansport, Indiana. He had heard about the federal government's investigations of "irregularities" among Indian traders and the Potatawatomis, as well as the government's efforts to speed up the removal of the Potawatomi tribe from northern Indiana to reservation land in the Kansas Territory. Winter planned to observe and make sketches the Potawatomis during the legal proceedings. Although he only intended to make a brief stay before returning to the eastern United States, Winter remained at Logansport until 1850.[3][10]

Winter married Mary Jane Squier, the daughter of Timothy and Rebekah Tucker Squier, on August 5, 1840, at Miamisburg, Ohio. Her father was a proprietor of stagecoach lines at Dayton, Ohio. Winter applied for U.S. citizenship in July 1841 and became a naturalized citizen. Winter and his wife established a home in Logansport. Their son, George Jr., was born on June 22, 1841; a daughter, Annette, was born on January 6, 1844. A second daughter, Agnes, died on July 24, 1850, at the age of seventeen months.[11][12][13]

When his brother, Charles, died in San Francisco, California, in 1874, Winter traveled west to settle the estate and inherited his brother's California home. George returned to Indiana in 1875 and brought his wife, Mary, to Oakland, California, where they stayed for more than a year. During his brief residency in California, Winter became a member of the San Francisco Art Association and exhibited ten works of art at its exhibition in 1875.[28]

Winter and his wife returned to Lafayette on January 26, 1876. He died unexpectedly of apoplexy on February 1, 1876, while attending a meeting of railroad stockholders at Snyder's Opera House in Lafayette.[28][29] Following funeral services at Lafayette's Saint John's Church, he was buried in the city's Greenbush Cemetery.[30]

Indiana's art historians consider Winter as the "most significant of Indiana's pioneer painters" in the first half of the nineteenth century and the state's "principal landscape painter of the period."[28] He is also one of the state's first professional artists, although the work of Charles Alexandre Lesueur predates Winter's artistic work on the Indiana frontier and Jacob Cox of Indianapolis was one of his contemporaries.[3]

Despite Winter's fame in northern Indiana's Wabash River valley, where he lived for nearly forty years, he was not well known outside of Indiana during his lifetime. By 1900 Winter and his work had fallen into obscurity.[4][31] Two of Winter's works that achieved modest success during his lifetime were Spotted Faun and his version of The Indian Captive.[32] Winter's best-known work was his painting of Francis Slocum. Winter and the painting received increased attention after John F. Meginness's biography of Francis Slocum was published fifteen years after Winter's death.[28]

Winter and his most noteworthy and valuable works remained largely unknown until the 1930s and 1940s, when the largest single collection of Winter's art and documentary materials that he had never sold were rediscovered by his descendants. In 1986 Evelyn Osterman Ball of Lafayette, the widow of Winter's great-grandson, Cable Gordon Ball, donated the extensive collection to the Tippecanoe County Historical Association in Lafayette.[24] In addition to Winter's paintings and sketches, the Association's George Winter Collection includes a large manuscript collection of Winter's notes, papers, correspondence, and other materials related to his life.[33] The collection has important historic value due to its detailed descriptions of Winter's firsthand accounts of the Potawatomi and Miami tribes in northern Indiana during the mid-nineteenth century.[14][15][34]

Winter's sketches and the subsequent portraits he painted remain the best visual record of the Potawatomi and Miami tribes in northern Indiana during the 1830s and 1840s. He notable for his efforts to document their daily lives from his firsthand observations in the field.[4][35] Winter's work in documenting the Potawatomi and Miami people in Indiana is unique. Other noted artists such as George Catlin and Paul Kane depicted these tribes in other regions of the country or at a later date, following their removal west of the Mississippi River.[35] Winter's oil paintings and watercolors depicted the likenesses of Francis Godfroy, the last war chief of the Miamis, Native American interpreter Joseph Barron, and Frances Slocum, among many others. He also documented the daily lives of the Miami and Potawatomi people, as well as the beginning of the Trail of Death, the forced removal of the Potawatomis to the Kansas Territory in 1839.[14][15] It is for these reasons, rather than his artistic skill, that Winter's work remains "an important primary source for the still largely unwritten historical ethnography of the Potawatomis and Miamis."[36]

Winter was not known for his mastery of technique. Some art critics have identified shortcomings in his portraits, especially regarding the use of color, handling of paint, and "minor" anatomical accuracies.[37] Critics also consider Winter as a minor figure on the national art scene, with a technical ability in the middle range of his contemporaries who did similar work.[36] Some critics have also pointed out that Winter's art lacked the romantic interpretation of Native Americans who retained their own culture, which was a more popular style that appeared in the work of other artists.[32]

Winter's fame as an Indiana artist increased in the twentieth century after he was included in Mary Burnet's Art and Artists of Indiana (1921), an early work on the subject. The publication of The Journals and Indian Paintings of George Winter, 1837–1839 (1948), a compilation Winter's journals and manuscripts, and a subsequent series of public exhibitions in Indiana, also helped increase public awareness of his work.[24][38][39] A portion of the Tippecanoe County Historical Association's George Winter Collection is available online through a cooperative project of the Association and the Purdue University Libraries Archives and Special Collections.[34]

Engravings and other reproductions of Winter's paintings and sketches appear in several published works.

• Four engravings of Winter's paintings appeared as frontispieces in the Cincinnati Ladies Repository in 1850 and 1851, and another engraving of his work was published in its November 1853 issue.[11][71]
• The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution (1855) by Benson John Lossing includes a reproduction of Winter's painting of Francis Slocum.[28][72]
• Winter's brief story on Slocum appeared in the Philadelphia Press in 1870.[73]
• Biography of Frances Slocum, The Lost Sister of Wyoming. A Complete Narrative of Her Captivity and Wanderings Among the Indians (1891) by John F. Meginness includes details about the Winter in its appendix, as well as reproductions of three Winter portraits owned by the Slocum family.[28][74]
• Winter's journals and sketches were published in The Journals and Indian Paintings of George Winter, 1837–1839 (1948) and Indians and a Changing Frontier: The Art of George Winter (1993).

Winter's work is represented in several public collections.

• Cass County Historical Society, Logansport, Indiana[75]
• Lafayette Arts Center, Lafayette, Indiana[75]
• Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis[75]
• Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis[75]
• Indianapolis Museum of Art[43]
• Miami County Historical Society, Peru, Indiana[75]
• Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana[75]
• Tippecanoe County Historical Association, Lafayette, Indiana[42]
• Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison[75]
• Wyoming Historical and Genealogical Society, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania[75]

• Winter was named an honorary member of the Wisconsin Historical Society in 1857.[28]
• The first comprehensive exhibition of Winter's work was held at the John Herron Art Museum, Indianapolis, in 1939.[28]
• Other major exhibitions of Winter's work include:
  • Ball State University Art Gallery, Muncie, Indiana, in 1976.[28]
  • Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis, in 1980–81.[28]
  • Greater Lafayette Museum of Art, Lafayette, Indiana, in 1985.[28]

• Burnet, Mary Q. (1921). Art and Artists of Indiana. New York: The Century Company. pp. 38–57.
• Cottman, George S. (September 1905). "George Winter, Artist: The Catlin of Indiana". Indiana Magazine of History. 1 (3). Retrieved July 12, 2016.
• Feest, Christian F., and R. David Edmunds (authors); Cooke, Sarah E., and Rachel Ramadhyani (eds.) (1993). Indians and a Changing Frontier: The Art of George Winter. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society. ISBN 0-87195-097-9. {{cite book}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Flavin, Francis (March 2002). "The Adventurer-Artists of the Nineteenth Century and the Image of the American Indiana". Indiana Magazine of History. Bloomington: Indiana University. 98 (1): 1–29. Retrieved July 12, 2016.
• "George Winter". Purdue University Libraries. Retrieved July 20, 2016.
• Opitz, Glenn B., ed. (1987). Mantle Fielding's Dictionary of American Painters, Sculptors & Engravers. Poughkeepsie, NY: Apollo Book. pp. 1047. ISBN 0-938290-04-5.
• Winter, George; Howard H. Peckham, Wilbur D. Peat; and Gayle Thornbrough (1948). The Journals and Indian Paintings of George Winter, 1837–1839. Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society. OCLC 1281444.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• "George Winter: Biographical Information". Tippecanoe County Historical Society. Retrieved July 11, 2016.
• Lossing, Benson John (1855). The Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution, or Illustrations, by Pen and Pencil, of the History, Biography, Scenery, Relics and Traditions of the War for Independence. Vol. I. New York: Harper and Brothers. p. 369. OCLC 7321351.
• Meginness, John F. (1891). Biography of Frances Slocum, The Lost Sister of Wyoming. A Complete Narrative of Her Captivity and Wanderings Among the Indians. Williamsport, PA: Heller Brothers Printing. OCLC 5966966.
• Productions of My Pencil: The Art of George Winter, Indiana State Museum, November 1, 1980 – May 3, 1981. Indianapolis: Indiana State Museum. OCLC 7860648.
• The George Winter Collection: Gift of Mrs. Cable G. Ball. Lafayette, Indiana: Tippecanoe County Historical Association. 1986. OCLC 15709770.

• Dye, Kitty (2001). 'Meet George Winter: Pioneer Artist, Journalist, Entrepreneur. Port Clinton, OH: LeClere Publishing Company. ISBN 0-9702501-1-8.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to George Winter.

• Entries from George Winter's journal
• George Winter, Indianapolis Museum of Art
• George Winter Biography (includes lesson plans), Purdue University Libraries, West Lafayette, Indiana
• George Winter Collections, Purdue University Libraries
• Tippecanoe County Historical Society: George Winter