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Chief Wolf Robe / Carl Kauba

Essay/Description

This is a reference image scanned from an older transparency.

Gallery Label

This image of the Southern Cheyenne Chief Wolf Robe was taken directly from an 1898 photograph made in Omaha, Nebraska, at the Indian Congress associated with the Trans Mississippi International Exposition. Frank Rinehart photographed the more than 500 Indians in attendance, including Wolf Robe, who had been forced to Indian Territory in 1870. Rinehart’s popular images were published as books and sold individually at the Exposition. Carl Kauba was an Austrian sculptor who lived in Vienna. It is believed that he never visited the United States and sculpted his American subjects from photographs like this one. His recreation of the beadwork colors on the moccasins and pipe bag indicate he worked from the pricier hand-tinted version of the photograph. Typical of Viennese bronzes of the period, the colors are made with paint rather than with chemicals, as was the case in the U.S. Kauba is said to have personally supervised the casting of his work at various Viennese foundries.

From the exhibition:Frontier to Foundry: the Making of Small Bronze Sculpture in the Gilcrease Collection, December 2014 - March 2015.
Ann Boulton Young, Associate Conservator for the Gilcrease Museum, 2014.

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Title(s): 
Chief Wolf Robe
Creator(s): 
Carl Kauba (Artist)
Culture: 
Austrian
Date: 
circa 1910
Materials/Techniques: 
sand cast in bronze
Classification: 
Object Type: 
Accession No: 
08.91
Previous Number(s): 
0876.91; 33709
Department: 
Not On View

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