Artist John Mix Stanley, American, 1814-1872
Title
  • Indian Telegraph
Date 1860
Medium oil on canvas
Dimensions Unframed: 20 × 15 1/2 inches (50.8 × 39.4 cm)
Framed: 27 3/8 × 23 3/8 × 2 7/8 inches (69.5 × 59.4 × 7.3 cm)
Credit Line Detroit Museum of Art Purchase, Popular Subscription Fund
Accession Number 01.2
Department American Art before 1950
On View American W273, Level 2 (see map)
Signed Signed and dated, lower left: J. M. Stanley | 1860
Inscriptions Inscribed, on the back of the canvas, beneath lining: The scene is laid amidst the rugged ground of the Gila river country and represents a party of Apaches advising their friends of the advance of General Kearney's expedition. In the foreground stands a high rock, iluminated by the rays of the declining sun. A party of Apaches are approaching while two have already scaled the rocks and one of them is waving a smoking foggot on high and the other is shading his eyes from the sun's rays with his hand. In the distance, across the valley to the left, a faint streak of smoke rises from behind a hill, which appears to be the answer to the signal. A mountain range dimly looming up on the horizen completes the picture.
1868, Mrs. M. Noble Brainard;
1901-present, purchase by the Detroit Museum of Art (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
Kinietz, W. Vernon. John Mix Stanley and his Indian Paintings. Ann Arbor, 1942 (pl. 13).

Custer, Gen. George A. My Life on the Plains. Chicago, 1952, p. 490 (ill.).

The Last Frontier. Exh. cat., Nelson-Atkins Gallery of Art. Kansas City, 1957, no. 64.

The Noble Savage. Exh. cat., University of Pennsylvania Museum. Philadelphia, 1958, no. 67.

John Mix Stanley: A Traveler in the West. Exh. cat., University of Michigan Museum of Art. Ann Arbor, 1969, no. 7 (ill.).

Comstock, Helen. The Concise Encyclopedia of American Antiques, Vol. 2. New York (pl. 240 A).