2024 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction25 / 48 • View Catalog •
Prev Lot
•
Next Lot 
VERSO
Signed and titled
Label, National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Label, The Thomas Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma
Western historian Don Hedgpeth wrote, “The Lewis and Clark expedition had reached the shores of the Pacific and had begun the trek back across the continent. In July, 1806, Captain Lewis and three members of the party split off from the expedition to explore the area around the mouth of the Yellowstone. They met a Piegan hunting party and shared a camp for the night. The Piegans were a band of the Blackfeet tribe, a people of a proud warrior heritage. Toward dawn, the Piegans attempted to steal a rifle and the horses of Lewis’ party. A fight broke out, and two Piegans were killed.
“After that fatal morning on the Yellowstone, the Blackfeet would forever consider the white man to be their enemy. In the 1830s, Eagle’s Rib, a Piegan Blackfeet war chief, would boast to artist George Catlin that he had taken the scalps of eight white trappers.
“This formidable row of mounted warriors symbolizes the Blackfeet’s determination to defend their homeland against the white Invaders.”
PROVENANCE
The artist
David Lovell, by descent
Present owner, by descent
EXHIBITED
Clymer, Lovell and Teague at Gilcrease, The Thomas Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 1987
Tom Lovell: An Invitation to History, National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1992
LITERATURE
Don Hedgpeth, The Art of Tom Lovell: An Invitation to History, The Greenwich Workshop Press, 1993, cover, pp. 86-87, illustrated