George de Forest Brush (1855-1941) is far from being a household name, but his early paintings of Indians garnered him the attention, admiration, and purse of the 19th-century art world. Little of this work has been seen in public, however, since private collectors bought the paintings as soon as they went on sale in the 1880s and sequestered them in family estates, including Yves Saint Laurent’s. Nancy K. Anderson, curator of British and American art, and a small band of scholars located 21 of the paintings over a ten year period. These works are now on display at the National Gallery of Art until January 4, at which time they will move west to the Seattle Art Museum.
The exhibition begins with a small portrait not of an Indian but of the artist himself. He is a handsome man, thirty-something, serious, and dapper, but his portrait is not quite finished. The crisp white collar is there, deftly rendered in taught, baby brushstrokes, but where his jacket would be there is only a hurried film of brown paint–a sign that Brush didn’t care to tell us much about his dress or status or, ultimately, about how he might differ from us. What he does have in common with us is what he spent his time and paint on: a face.
