Night Raid

Description

Night Raid

Minerva Teichert, 1941

Action-packed Western movies inspired artists like Minerva Teichert to paint fast-moving stage coaches, Indians, horses, and cattle drives. In this painting, Indians chase stolen horses in the moonlight as pioneer wagons perch on distant cliffs. Such scenes appealed to viewers and marked the West as wild and lawless. (“Branding the American West,” 2016)

When historian Frederick Jackson Turner argued that the American character was forged on the frontier, he was acknowledging that conflict had played a central role in creating America as we know it. While conflict can take many different shapes, from the civil debate of political ideologies to international warfare, the violent interaction between peoples has sadly been a near constant presence in American history.

Alternating conflict and cooperation between colonists and native peoples in particular has been a continuing story within America’s grand narrative. It is difficult, however, to disentangle the true history from the romanticized and mythologized version of the past that has been reenacted in books, movies, and in playground games of “Cowboys and Indians.” Minerva Teichert’s Night Raid is one such scene, which takes its narrative cues from the mythic West of the silver screen.

This piece is part of the Pageants in Paint and The First 100 Years exhibitions.

More About Teichert

The works of western American artist, Minerva Teichert, have received increasingly popular and critical acclaim in recent years. Today, the LDS community loves Teichert. She is a woman who successfully combined both faith and family and left an extraordinary legacy of artistic production.

Minerva Kohlhepp was born in North Ogden, but grew up homestead farming in the vicinity of American Falls, Idaho. Her father encouraged her childhood sketching. Soon, she developed an “indomitable will to succeed and excel in the field of art.” She taught school to raise enough money to go to Chicago for her art studies.

She attended the Art Institute of Chicago and Art Students League of New York in the early 1900s. There, mural paintings and theatrical pageants were dynamic components of American popular culture. Teichert embraced these art forms. Following the admonition of her art teacher – the American realist painter Robert Henri – she used the visual language these murals provided to tell the narrative of her religious heritage as well as that of the American West.