Indians on the Platte River

Additional Information

Born in a log cabin in the Ohio Valley, Worthington Whittredge was both an important Hudson River painter and a crucial interpreter of the plains and prairies of the American West. At 17, Whittredge moved to Cincinnati where he painted houses and signs. He also taught himself to paint landscapes and found a patron who sent him to Europe. After five years of study, Whittredge went to Rome where he met American expatriates, including Frederic Church. In 1859, he returned to the United States and aligned himself with the Hudson River School. (Bonus Trivial Pursuit fact: Whittredge posed as George Washington for Emanuel Leutze in Washington Crossing the Delaware.) In 1865, Whittredge traveled west with Gifford and Kensett. Where other painters, Bierstadt most notably, had been inspired by the Rocky Mountains, Whittredge saw something mysterious and sublime in the broad, grassy watershed of Nebraska’s Platte River and developed a panoramic format to capture the horizons and beauties of the area. Indians on the Platte River is a supreme example of his efforts. Of the Platte, Whittredge wrote: “I had never seen the plains or anything like them... I cared more for them than for the mountains, and very few of my western pictures have been produced from sketches made in the mountains, but rather from those made on the plains with the mountains in the distance. Whoever crossed the plains at that period, not withstanding its herds of buffalo and flocks of antelope, its wild horses, deer and fleet rabbits, could hardly fail to be impressed with its vastness and silence and the appearance everywhere of an innocent, primitive existence.”

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