Description:
Tempera on paper. Stamped u.r.: PLANCHE 32.
From: American Indian Painters, Vol. 1, p. 18: Among the Indians, the pictorial art has by tradition been a man's art. Women rarely participated in it. It was concerned with war, the hunt, tribal history, personal biography, and religious ceremony, all male activities. The feminine arts were decorative design, the crafts, and costumes. Even during this late upsurge of artistic activity of the last twenty-five years or so, very few Indian girls have done outstanding work. There are three or four among the Pueblos who have received considerable notice in the art world, and two among the Plains tribes. These latter are no longer producing, being occupied with motherhood and domestic affairs. Marian Terasaz is a pure blood Commanche girl who was born in 1916. She is included in this work because she is talented and painted some splendid watercolors of Indian women and children which she was a student at Bacone College, and because her paintings are rare. The Indian girl in buckskin, here reproduced, is a typical example of her work. She did not attempt any complicated arrangements of color. Few Indian paintings of today are heavy or robust, but Marian's work possesses a delicacy, grace, and charm that could be described by not other term but feminine. (Collection, Oscar Brousse Jacobson)