Karl Bodmer

Johann Carl Bodmer was born on 11 February 1809 in Zurich, Switzerland. When he was thirteen, his mother’s brother, Johann Jakob Meier, a prominent engraver,[3] became Bodmer's teacher. Meier was an artist, having studied under the well-known artists Heinrich Füssli and Gabriel Lory. Young Bodmer and his older brother, Rudolf, joined their uncle on artistic travels throughout their home country.

Map of Bodmer's travels in North America between 1832 and 1834

Fort Pierre on the Missouri an aquatint from Maximilian, Prince of Wied’s Travels in the Interior of North America (1843-1844)

Scalp Dance of the Minitarres

View of Bethlehem, an 1832 aquatint of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania by Bodmer

A Stop; Evening Bivouac, 1833

By 1828, Bodmer had left his native Switzerland to work as a painter and engraver in the German city of Koblenz. It was there that he and his work came to the attention of Prinz Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied. This German aristocrat had successfully led a scientific expedition to Brazil in 1815–1817. He decided to embark on another such venture, this time to North America and especially the American West. He hired Bodmer to accompany his expedition and make a visual record of the places and peoples encountered, through painting, drawings, etc. The aristocrat was known popularly to naturalists then and now as Prince Max.

After delays, Bodmer, in the company of Prince Max and David Dreidoppel, a huntsman and taxidermist, sailed for North America on 17 May 1832. In a letter on that date, Prince Max wrote to his brother that Bodmer "is a lively, very good man and companion, seems well educated, and is very pleasant and very suitable for me; I am glad I picked him. He makes no demands, and in diligence he is never lacking."

Arriving in Boston, Massachusetts, on 4 July, the three encountered hardships and delays caused largely by a cholera epidemic in the eastern states. It swept across the northern tier to Michigan via travelers on the waterways. The three men finally reached Pittsburgh, and started from there October 8 to travel west along the Ohio River. They arrived in Mt. Vernon, Indiana about midnight on 18 October. The next morning, the party made their way to New Harmony, Indiana.

Prince Max had planned to spend only a few days in New Harmony, but his stay "was prolonged by serious indisposition, nearly resembling cholera, to a four months' winter residence." The Prince devotes a chapter of his book of the expedition to New Harmony and its environs. He featured the work and personalities of Thomas Say and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, two leading American naturalists. Lesueur was also a prolific artist.

Unlike the Prince and Dreidoppel, Bodmer escaped the illness. Alone, he left New Harmony at the end of December, and on 3 January 1833 caught a steamboat at Mt. Vernon, Indiana. He traveled down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, spending a week with Joseph Barrabino. This Italian-American naturalist was a friend of Say and Lesueur. (A fine pencil portrait of Barrabino, drawn by Lesueur, is preserved at the New Harmony Workingmen's Institute.)

In April 1833, Prince Max, Bodmer and Dreidoppel set out from St. Louis on the 2,500-mile journey by steamboat and later keelboat up the Missouri River. They eventually traveled as far as Fort McKenzie (near present-day Fort Benton, Montana). After wintering at Fort Clark near the Mandan villages, they returned downriver the following spring, having spent more than a year on the Upper Missouri. Bodmer had extensively documented the journey with visual images, while Prince Max took copious notes for the book he intended to write.

After completing the expedition, Bodmer returned to Germany with Prince Maximilian, then traveled to France. In Paris he had many of his paintings from the expedition (81 in total) reproduced as aquatints. The Prince had these images incorporated into his book of the expedition, which was first published in German in Koblenz as Reise in das innere Nord-Amerika in den Jahren 1832 bis 1834 in two volumes from 1839 to 1841. Its English translation, Maximilian Prince of Wied’s Travels in the Interior of North America, during the years 1832–1834, was published in London in 1843-1844.

Bodmer then moved to Barbizon, France, and later became a French citizen. Recorded as Jean-Charles Bodmer, he went by "Charles Bodmer". He became a member of the Barbizon School, a group of painters who specialized in landscapes and works featuring animals. He worked in a variety of genres, including painting, etching, wood engraving, and illustration. Among his well-known works from this period was La Foret en Hiver (Interior of the forest in winter), exhibited at the Salon 1850 in Paris.[4] It was painted at Fontainebleau forest. Bodmer also made an engraving of his painting, and reproductions were popular in the 1860s. Impressionist Claude Monet later painted the same trees, titling his painting The Bodmer Oak. This scene was the subject as well of numerous photographs in the 1870s.

His last years were difficult, as his illustrations became out of style, and he was affected by illness and poverty.

Bodmer died in Paris, shortly after receiving his French citizenship. He is buried in Chailly-en-Biere, at the entrance of the Fontainebleau forest. His three sons, Charles, Rodolphe and Henri, were colorful characters of the community of artists and poachers in Barbizon.[5]

Although Bodmer is still relatively unknown in France, a first exhibition was dedicated to his works in September 2021 in Barbizon].[6]

• 
  Dacota warrior
• 
  Abdih-Hiddisch. A Minatarre Chief
• 
  Pehriska-Ruhpa of the Dog Society of the Hidatsa tribe of Native Americans
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  Mato-tope holding a lance and wearing painted and quilled shirt of the Mandan

• 
  Aquatint illustration from the book "Maximilian, Prince of Wied’s Travels in the Interior of North America, during the years 1832–1834".
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  Magic Pile of Assinboin Indians
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  Horse Racing of the Sioux

• North America Native Museum

• Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Maximilian Prince of Wied’s Travels in the Interior of North America, during the years 1832–1834. Ackermann & Comp., London 1843–1844 (English translation)
• Reuben Gold Thwaites: Early Western Travels, 1748–1846 (vol. 22–25), Arthur H. Clark Compagny, Cleveland-Ohio 1906.
• Reuben Gold Thwaites: Early Western Travels, 1748–1846. AMS Press, New York 1966.
• Philip Gilbert Hamerton: The Portfolio, Vol. 1-2. With Illustrations by Emilia Bodmer. London 1870.
• Philip Gilbert Hamerton: Chapters on Animals.. With Twenty Illustrations by J. Veygrassat and Emilia Bodmer. Boston, Roberts Brothers, 1977.
• David C. Hunt, William J. Orr, W. H. Goetzmann (editor): Karl Bodmer’s America. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha (Nebraska) 1984. ISBN 978-0-8032-1185-8
• John C. Ewers: Views of Vanishing Frontier. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha (Nebraska), 1984 + 1985
• Marsha V. Gallagher: Karl Bodmer’s Eastern Views. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha (Nebraska), 1996
• Didier Lévêque, Eliane Foulquié (Ed.): Peindre les Indiens, l'Art de Karl Bodmer, Rosa Bonheur, Antoine Tzapoff, Paris,Les Amis de Rosa Bonheur, 2020, ISBN 978-2-9567368-3-7
• Brandon K. Ruud (editor): Karl Bodmer’s North American Prints. Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha (Nebraska), 2004. ISBN 978-0-8032-1326-5.
• W. Raymond Wood, Joseph C. Porter, David C. Hunt: Karl Bodmer’s Studio Art: The Newberry Library Bodmer Collection. University of Illinois Press. Urbana and Chicago 2002. ISBN 978-0-252-02756-7
• Henri Beraldi: Les Graveurs du XIXe Siécle. Guide de l’amateur d’estampes modernes. 2. Band, Seite 137 bis 143. Librarie L. Conquet, Paris 1885.
• Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Verzeichnis der Reptilien welche auf einer Reise im nördlichen America beobachtet wurden. Bibliomania!, Salt Lake City c. 2006. ISBN 978-1-932871-04-3 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-932871-03-6 (unbound).
• Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied: Reise in das innere Nord-Amerika in den Jahren 1832 bis 1834, 2 vol., Koblenz, 1840-41. Reprint of L. Borowsky, München, 1979.
• Nordamerika Native Museum Zürich: Karl Bodmer. A Swiss Artist in America 1809-1893. Ein Schweizer Künstler in Amerika. University of Chicago Press and Scheidegger & Spiess, Zürich 2009 (English and German). ISBN 978-3-85881-236-0

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Karl Bodmer.

• Collection at Old Book Art Archived 2014-10-26 at the Wayback Machine All 81 aquatint illustrations and map from Maximilian Prince of Wied’s Travels in the Interior of North America, during the years 1832–1834
• Madelyn Dean Garrett: Karl Bodmer’s Aquatints: The changing Image. University of Utah 1990.
• Karl Bodmer Sketchbook
• Reise In Das Innere Nord-America color plates
• Ten Dreams Galleries
• Karl Bodmer Website Archived 2020-09-21 at the Wayback Machine
• Karl Bodmer Aquatints