Genre scene from the American Wild West: rushing Missouri indians with a white captive on horseback. For the most famous Indian captive in American history Cynthia Ann Parker see following link: https://www.humanitiestexas.org/programs/tx-originals/list/cynthia-ann-parker

Our painting was executed in 1860s by famous American genre, landscape and portrait painter of the Düsseldorf School, illustrator and photographer Matthew Hastings (1834 in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. - 1919 in St. Louis, Missouri).

Hastings, son of Elizabeth Hastings, who was born in Ireland, moved to St. Louis in 1840, where he attended Saint Louis University after school. In St. Louis he made friends with the German-American painter Charles Wimar, who studied painting in Düsseldorf from 1852 to 1856. George Caleb Bingham, another painter from St. Louis who was friends with Hastings and who was active as a politician and member of parliament at the same time as painting, traveled to Düsseldorf in 1856 to study painting. Hastings followed their example in 1857 and also traveled to Düsseldorf to study. Until 1858 he was a private student of Philip Moravier Lindo there.

After graduating, Hastings returned to his mother in St. Louis and settled there as a portrait painter. In 1860 he exhibited a portrait at the First Annual Exhibition of the Western Artists ’Association, and in the same year at the St. Louis Agricultural and Mechanical Association Fair a landscape painting in watercolor, a portrait and a few sketches. Together with Adolph Gandy, Hastings ran the "Hastings and Gandy" photo studio in St. Louis in 1865/1866. He also undertook study trips within Missouri, for example to the Arcadia Valley in the St. Francois Mountains. Around 1870 Hastings was possibly a participant in an expedition led by the Jesuit Pierre-Jean De Smet to proselytize Indians on the upper Missouri River. In any case, Hastings created watercolor illustrations of these Indian missions. During the First World War he created a poster for the recruitment of American soldiers. A total of around 600 paintings and a large number of sketches and drawings are assigned to Hastings. Caricatures are also from his pen.

Literature: General artist lexicon by Saur ( in German); Christopher Gordon : Art and Artists Collection, 1806–1998. Missouri Historical Society Archives, 2004; George C. Groce, David H. Wallace: The New-York Historical Society’s Dictionary of Artists in America, 1564–1860. Yale University Press, New Haven 1957; Jane A. Reynard: Paintings and Sculpture in St. Louis ca. 1800–1860. University of Missouri, Columbia 1975; Ross J. Kelbaugh: Directory of Civil War Photographers. V.3: Western States and Territories. Historic Graphics, Baltimore 1992, p. 59; Hastings, Matthew. In: Peter E. Palmquist, Thomas R. Kailbourn: Pioneer photographers from the Mississippi to the continental divide. A biographical dictionary, 1839–1865. Stanford University Press, Stanford/Kalifornien 2005, p. 312

Inscription: signed lower left.

Technique: oil on canvas, splendid original period gold-plated frame.

Measurements: unframed w 27" x h 22" ( 68,5 x 56 cm ), framed w 34 1/2 " x h 29 1/2" ( 87,5 x 75 cm )

Condition: very good.