Sioux Indian Painting Portfolios, Parts I and II

The French publisher, C. Szwedzicki, issued a series of six art portfolios between 1929 and 1952 (this two-volume set was released in 1938) on Native American art, edited by American scholars Oscar Burr Jacobson, Kenneth Milton Chapman, and Hartley Alexander. To the credit of the publisher, the portfolios were printed in the expensive combination of collotype and pochoir, a process that took weeks to complete.

Part I of the Sioux portfolios is entitled Sioux Indian Painting Part I Painting of the Sioux and Other Tribes of the Great Plains with Introduction and Notes by Hartley Burr Alexander.  It was published in 1938 in an edition of 400 copies, each containing 25 plates of art.  The second portfolio was entitled Sioux Indian Painting Part II The Art of Amos Bad Heart Buffalo with Introduction and Notes by Hartley Burr Alexander. It too was published in 1938, also in an edition of 400 copies and with 25 plates of art. 

Part I contains a 15-page letterpress introduction in both French and English and 25 sheets of plates contained in a hard cover portfolio measuring 19-3/8" x 16" with string ties and a color plate on the front cover.  Artworks of a number of Sioux, Shoshone, and Kiowa artists (Kills Two, Amos Bad Heart Buffalo, Pretty Hawk, Chief Washakie, and Silver Horn) are included.

Part II contains a 10-page letterpress introduction in both French and English and 25 sheets of plates devoted to the Battle of the Little Big Horn and Wounded Knee Massacre, all pictographic art renderings by Amos Bad Heart Buffalo, an Oglala Sioux, who was only age 6 at the time of the battle, but who became the tribal historian. Seventeen of the twenty-five plates in this volume relate entirely to the Custer battle, and the others to the Wounded Knee massacre.  His documentation of the battle is among the few visual records, all of which were left by Indians.

Of the 50 plates in the two portfolios, only one is missing from this set. Plate 9 of Part I "Indian Horse Dance" is the missing plate.

This Sioux set of pictographic pochoir prints is rather rare as many sets have been broken up for framing and a number of sets were destroyed in France during World War II.  Complete sets are extremely rare. 

Condition: All plates from Part I and Part II are in good, unframed condition and would be suitable for display. While the Part II cover shows some soiling, the plates within are undamaged.

Provenance: these Sioux Indian Painting Portfolios, Parts I and II are from the collection of a client from Oklahoma