Gilcrease Museum is temporarily closed for construction.

Get the Full Story

Portrait of a Man / Stephen Mopope, August 27, 1898 - February 1974, Native American; Kiowa (Artist)

Essay/Description

For this portrait, Kiowa (Cáuigù)1 artist Stephen Mopope has painted the background a graduating azure blue to mimic the sky. The sitter is dressed in formal Kiowa attire, including a men’s buckskin shirt with finely cut fringe sewn into both shoulder inseams, and a headdress made from porcupine hair or perhaps deer-tail hair adorned with an eagle feather. His hair is evenly parted in the middle and braided, and over his left ear is a handworked German-silver adornment that is fastened to the top of a lock of hair. The braids are modestly wrapped in braintanned otter-fur pelts, with fully beaded ties fastened to the top of each braid.

Around his neck is a brightly colored silk scarf fastened with an ornately engraved and handstamped German-silver tie slide. The tie slide has a detailed design depicting a tipi with five individuals seated within it. Colorful neckties, scarves, and neckerchiefs were widely collected and traded across the Great Plains, and they had many different applications in nineteenth-century Indigenous fashion.

—Jordan Poorman Cocker, Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar for Indigenous Painting Collection Research, 2021

_____________________________
1 Cáuigù is the correct identity used by the Kiowa Tribe.

You may be interested in...

Title(s): 
Portrait of a Man
Creator(s): 
Stephen Mopope, August 27, 1898 - February 1974, Native American; Kiowa (Artist)
Culture: 
Native American; Kiowa
Date: 
1945
Materials/Techniques: 
oil on canvas
Paper/Support: 
Portrait; single-sided 4.555-4.565mm linen canvas attached to multilayered, ridged board
Classification: 
Object Type: 
Accession No: 
01.2034
Previous Number(s): 
0127.2034; 26861
Department: 
Not On View

Our Online Collections site is a work in progress. If you have information about this item that may be of assistance, please contact us.