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The Mourning Brave
From the collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum. Free to download, adapt and use — no permission needed.
About this work
Edwin Willard Deming’s paintings romanticized the lives of Native Americans, feeding the myth of a vanishing race of noble savages. In this painting an Indian brave mourns the death of an Indian woman inside a shadowed teepee. With his hands covering his face, he prays over her body, asking the Great Mystery, symbolized by the light that streams from above, to protect her spirit and guide it to the “Happy Western land beyond the Great Waters” (Walsh, ed., Edwin Willard Deming, His Work, 1925).
Smithsonian American Art Museum’s own descriptionSubjects
Credit lineThe Mourning Brave. ca. 1892. Edwin Willard Deming, born Ashland, OH 1860-died New York City 1942. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans. CC0.
