Both articles, Julie Schimmel’s Inventing the Indian and Leonard Bell’s Artist and Empire: Victorian Representation of Subject People, delve into the topic of native people and their representation and misrepresentation in artwork. Bell’s writing dives a bit deeper in my opinion in terms of his historical analysis than Julie Schimmel’s. Schimmel’s writing comes from the viewpoint that leans more toward the side of art history rather than historical and tends to brush over the historical relationship between the whites and the Indians. I should note that she does go into enough detail so that a reader with no prior knowledge of the already strained relationship between the Native Americans and the White Americans would be able to understand
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Bell on the other hand goes into more detail to explain the relationship between the Maori and the British Empire whether that be his discussion of the Maori Land Wars, the historical significance of the painting of Hare Pomare and His Family by William Strutt, or the history behind Nicholas Chevalier’s painting Hinemoa: A Maori Maiden and the discussion of the Maori myth that inspired it. Bell mainly sticks with these few subjects but rather fully delves into their …show more content…
Schimmel focuses more on how the Native Americans were depicted as a race of people rather than how they were dealt with as individuals. The majority of her writing focuses on the brutal treatment of Native Americans by Americans in art which can be seen through her analysis of John Mix Stanley’s Osage Scalp Dance, 1845 and Carl Wimar’s The Attack on an Emigrant Train 1856. Whereas Bell focuses on the less aggressive yet more sophisticated and cunning tactics of British artists. In his analysis of Hinemoa: A Maori Maiden Bell points out the romantic motif that was used to create this artwork. Hinemoa was seen as woman who fell in love with someone out of her social circle. This was recurring in British romance stories of the time and allowed the viewer enter the painting from a perspective that showed Maori as extoic verson of something already
Bell on the other hand goes into more detail to explain the relationship between the Maori and the British Empire whether that be his discussion of the Maori Land Wars, the historical significance of the painting of Hare Pomare and His Family by William Strutt, or the history behind Nicholas Chevalier’s painting Hinemoa: A Maori Maiden and the discussion of the Maori myth that inspired it. Bell mainly sticks with these few subjects but rather fully delves into their …show more content…
Schimmel focuses more on how the Native Americans were depicted as a race of people rather than how they were dealt with as individuals. The majority of her writing focuses on the brutal treatment of Native Americans by Americans in art which can be seen through her analysis of John Mix Stanley’s Osage Scalp Dance, 1845 and Carl Wimar’s The Attack on an Emigrant Train 1856. Whereas Bell focuses on the less aggressive yet more sophisticated and cunning tactics of British artists. In his analysis of Hinemoa: A Maori Maiden Bell points out the romantic motif that was used to create this artwork. Hinemoa was seen as woman who fell in love with someone out of her social circle. This was recurring in British romance stories of the time and allowed the viewer enter the painting from a perspective that showed Maori as extoic verson of something already