Trappers of Men

Nineteenth-century American and Canadian artists, including Paul Kane, George Catlin, Albert Bierstadt and Edward S. Curtis, often applied conventions of European Romantic painting to their depictions of Indigenous peoples. Instead of honouring the complexity of Indigenous cultures’ clothing, regalia and habits, they idealized and generalized their subjects, often perpetuating the misguided notion that all Indigenous peoples were part of a “vanishing race.” Forced expulsions characterized this singularly brutal and tragic period of westward expansion into Indigenous homelands. Here, Bierstadt’s landscape provides Monkman the setting to depict modernist artists, trappers, coureurs de bois, fur traders and travellers within a powerful scene.