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William W. Newcomb, Jr. with Mary S. Carnahan : German Artist on the Texas Frontier: Friedrich Richard Petri

University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 1978

ISBN 0292727178

4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall. AX4 - A first edition (no additional printing) hardcover book in very good condition in fair dust jacket that is mylar protected. Dust jacket has wrinkling, chipping, crease and some small tears on the edges and corners, significant scattered rubbing, scuffing, scratches, fading, and some foxing and stains, old price label adhered on fhe front flap, tanning, and shelf wear. Book has some bumped corners, some light cover edgewear, scattered light foxing and stains on the page edges, light tanning and shelf wear. 10.25"x8.25", 240 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. The land that awaited German artist Friedrich Richard Petri on the Texas frontier of the 1850s differed greatly from his native Dresden in Saxony, Germany. Along with many of his countrymen, Petri and his family had immigrated to Texas in search of a new, freer life. Although Petri lived in Texas but a scant seven years before his early death, the legacy of his work - the sketches and paintings preserved in this volume - lends a sense of concreteness to a vanished frontier and provokes a feeling of intimacy for a moment long since fled. He painted sensitive portraits of his family and friends and recorded many homely scenes of pioneer life in and around Fredericksburg. He was especially fascinated by the natives of this land, and he sketched and painted the Indians with affection, good humor, and skill. His Indian works document clearly, precisely, and compassionately the physical appearance, clothing, adornment, and life of these diverse and colorful people. Petri depicted Indians very differently than the old and outworn stereotype would have them portrayed. Nowhere among his works can one find the fiendish savage skulking around the pioneer cabin, waiting for the opportunity to steal the horses, rape the women, scalp the men, and kill or kidnap the children. Instead these are Indians and settlers engaged in casual and friendly conversations, here an Indian child eating a melon, there Indians youths spraddled languidly on their ponies. Petti's works constitute superb pictorial evidence of the amicable relationship between German settlers and Indians, challenge the old image of what Indians, challenge the old image of what Indians were like, and so add another kind of dimension to the continuing reinterpretation of this nation's past and its peoples. In this unusual blend of biography, art history, conventional history, and cultural anthropology, William Newcomb assembles most of the available biographical data and weaves in a rich body of interpretive background material pertaining to both Germany and Texas. He writes with authority about nineteenth-century German politics and art, European immigration to Texas, land grant and purchase customs, Indian policies of the Texas Republic, frontier community life, and the intricate relationships between the Indians and the settlers.. Book Condition: Very Good. Binding: Hardcover. Jacket: Fair

First Edition

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