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Exhibition Guide

Thomas Moran. Hiawatha and the Great Serpent, the Kenabeek. 1867. Baltimore Museum of Art, Friends of Art Fun, BMA 1967.17

Hiawatha and the Great Serpent, the Kenabeek

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Art Object Info

Thomas Moran

Medium:
Oil on canvas
Size:
Width: 29 1/2"
Height: 19 1/2"
Date:
1867

Thomas Moran drew inspiration for this painting from the 1855 epic poem The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). The popular poem, set on the southern shores of Lake Ontario in the Pictured Rocks area of what is now Michigan, details the adventures of a mythical Ojibwe warrior, not related to the 16th-century historical Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) leader of the same name. In the mid-19th century, artists and writers depicted idealized Native Americans within the narrative of a “vanished” past, which conveniently aligned with American expansionist goals: by the 1860s, white settlers had forced countless thousands of Native Americans off of their traditional homelands.

Friends of Art Fund BMA 1967.17

Hiawatha and the Great Serpent, the Kenabeek

Thomas Moran
Date:
1867
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Size:
Width: 29 1/2"
Height: 19 1/2"

Thomas Moran drew inspiration for this painting from the 1855 epic poem The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). The popular poem, set on the southern shores of Lake Ontario in the Pictured Rocks area of what is now Michigan, details the adventures of a mythical Ojibwe warrior, not related to the 16th-century historical Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) leader of the same name. In the mid-19th century, artists and writers depicted idealized Native Americans within the narrative of a “vanished” past, which conveniently aligned with American expansionist goals: by the 1860s, white settlers had forced countless thousands of Native Americans off of their traditional homelands.

Friends of Art Fund BMA 1967.17