Resignation, by Erastus Dow Palmer, 1854. Portrait of marble bust at the High Museum of Art. Dec 2012
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I thought I'd tackle a few sentences on Palmer's "Resignation", following my writing on Chauncey Bradley Ives' "Jephthah's Daughter", for whereas the subject of the daughter of Jephthah deals with her attaining honor through her heroic submission to her fated sacrifice, which ultimately discounts her as anything but a kind of property that is to be commended for compliance, Palmer's "Resignation" instead presents a woman who, by definition, may be defeated, but she isn't the absolving child who holds above all things as irrefutably sacred her father's vow made with god that if granted victory in battle he would sacrifice the first living creature he would meet when returning to his home, which fate determined would be his only, treasured daughter. "Resignation" isn't that. We don't know to what the woman is resigned. We don't know her exact feelings beyond that, but resignation is a choice word that doesn't connote forgiveness and absolution offered to whatever or whomever has made her preferred future an impossibility. This is not a woman who will imbibe a few platitudes and determine how to reframe her defeat as victory. This isn't a woman who beseeches her creator to transform her sadness into joy and becomes the model of the cheerful survivor. I don't know what Palmer's inspiration may have been, but it seems significant a woman with limited rights was chosen to bear this quality of loss. Considering the statue was made in 1854, what always comes to my mind, relevant or not, are the women who moved west with family to what was advertised as a utopian land of milk and honey, only to face a very solitary life in a harsh environment of extreme seasons, financial destruction with crops devoured by grasshoppers, hunger, and the devastation of a husband or children claimed by such illnesses as malaria. I've read enough accounts of women who found themselves in hopeless, desperate straits, or who were simply emotionally and physically exhausted by the pitilessness of the present projecting into the future.
I'm perhaps not half wrong in my view of "Resignation" as distinctly American, even frontier, because acquainting myself with his life I find that Palmer would come to be praised as a sculptor of the American experience, composing distinctly American faces.
Perhaps his perspective on "Resignation" was influenced by the death of his first wife, by childbirth, and losing their child not long after. Palmer did remarry several years later and had a family, but that initial shock of bereavement we can imagine having clung to him, and I read he suffered from something like depression, or at least some angst over the human condition.
In the shadows that encompass "Resignation's" eyes (note how he works her eyelids in a very novel way, so that they are rather like crescent moons) there is true loss. Those eyes aren't lowered in any display of humility or subjugation either, for resignation doesn't mean subjugation. In the firm set of her mouth, the weight of her flesh above it bearing down on the corners, the lips balanced by the chin in a way that is lovely but denies aspiration for pretty perfection, just as there is a lovely balance to the whole face while there is nothing about it wanting to be seen as beautiful, this is a sculpture about a woman and the thing that is resignation, nothing about it intended to be decorative.
Palmer held that he didn't attempt mimicry, that no matter how one attempted to produce a copy a face, it was impossible. In his "Philosophy of the Ideal" he stated he sought to represent "that indefinable something which a copy of form alone fails to give, and which when given, we feel as if in the presence of life."
Born in 1817 in New York, his father a carpenter-farmer, Palmer was exceptional for he was a self-taught artist, and supported himself and his family as a carpenter before achieving fame. Unlike many of his contemporaries, rather than moving to Europe he stayed in America. His transition from carpentry to sculpting came about through a fascination with cameos and his trying his hand at them. An account of a person from whom he sought criticism on his new undertaking admits they were surprised when Palmer, being told he was good, cried. The cameos became his source of income and his facility was such that he was hired to do hundreds. Romantic stories gave him as beginning to lose his eyesight, thus his move to large sculpture. Palmer instead told his son that it was a matter of natural progress. The small and fixed frame of the cameo eventually became too limiting--he had more he wanted to express.
Palmer's 1856 "Philosophy of the Ideal", on his approach to art, is not to be found online, but James Carson Webster's 1983 biography of the sculptor examines the essay, which has many ideas that are said to be influenced by social critic and reformer, John Ruskin. When we don't know much about a person, we may try to look to those whose ideals they appreciated. Ruskin may not have believed in equality of humans in so much as he was a Tory who thought there was an "eternal superiority of some men to others" (direct quote), but, according to Wikipedia, he "sought to resolve inequalities by abandoning capitalism in favour of a co-operative structure of society based on obedience and benevolent philanthropy, rooted in the agricultural economy", seemingly a form of Christian Socialism.
Let's just not mention that Ruskin turned out to have some major personal problems as they have nothing to do with Palmer.
Palmer did some problematic work, such as "The White Captive", a sculpture of a woman taken prisoner by Indians, and "The Dawn of Christianity", in which an indigenous woman confronts a Christian cross. He was interested in the frontier, but seemingly had never visited it, and one can imagine these works represent a belief that white and Christian equals civilization whereas indigenous equals savagery.
A 1946 article by Helen Ely Richardson states that we have nothing from Palmer on what he intended to express, and though she's not quite right on this, there is some ambiguity to his work.
One contemporaneous review of "The Dawn of Christianity", written by a minister, imagines the life of the Indian girl and her salvation, but this is what that particular minister saw. Another contemporaneous review instead states that we can't begin to state what the Indian girl is thinking, that her introduction to Christianity "is not a subject of sculpture and it is to the praise of Palmer that he understands the limit of his art; and, therefore, instead of a melodramatic posture and expression, we have the simple beauty of nature". That second review seemed to sense some of the ambiguity in Palmer's art that I encounter. But is that uncertainty actually there?
A contemporaneous glowing review of "The White Captive" impresses upon the piece sentiments of white civilization coming into the hands of indian savagery but stoically preserved by faith, and it does so all too eagerly imagining the sexual abuse that awaits the pure and brave Christian girl at the hands of the savages who have captured her. Richardson states, "Whether Palmer intended it or not, his critics and his public required a drama and a moral, if they were to commend the work".
Richardson may have held we don't know Palmer's intentions, but Brenna Casey's paper, "In Transit: Women, Photography, and the Consolidation of Race in Nineteenth-Century America", states that Palmer wrote, of "The Dawn of Christianity", to his sponsor, New York State Governor, Hamilton Fish, "This simple story illustrating the Dawn of Christianity upon the aborigines, is thus embodied." And to the painter, John Durand, he wrote that the Indian Girl was intended to "show the influence of Christianity on the savage," while The White Captive meant to demonstrate "the influence of the Savage upon Christianity".
These are works I don't care for when confronted with the "idea" of them, they seem obviously to be about Manifest Destiny and representing the superiority of the Christian conqueror. I don't care for what I've seen of them in photographs, they aren't very involving. But what is odd is that even when examined only in photos they are strange, certain details even seeming to belie their assumed, overt message. The indigenous girl in the 1853 "Dawn of Christianity" may be only vaguely indigenous, at least at certain angles, but we shall ignore that. The lower half of her body is wrapped in a robe carefully decorated with feathers around its border, and as I don't recollect in all my reading a practice of decorating all the edges of a robe with feathers (I could be wrong), this affectation would be only a matter of demonstrating his skill at giving the appearance of feathers. She looks upon the cross in her hand with a lack of expression that rather forcefully shows the utter and absolute lack of meaning this object has for her. She isn't saved by it. She doesn't gaze up to heaven, magically illuminated. The object simply is. If she is intended to be "savage" she is beautifully modeled and not debased. Even if she might be a stereotypical "noble savage", at least Palmer has taken care to portray her a dignified human being. There is that. And while some imagine a brave pioneer spirit expressed in the face and form of the "White Captive", carved in 1858, to me her expression is only one of anxiety and fear. America was pressing west, but she has been stopped, taken captive in a place where her family didn't belong.
We know, from what Palmer wrote, that "The White Captive" is intended to demonstrate "the influence of the Savage upon Christianity", and as she is entirely nude that must also be counted as part of the scenario, but his words do not simply describe the predicament of a "captive", not when the "savage" is given as influencing. All this is very problematic as the nudity is intended, it seems, to represent what is antithetical to chaste Christianity, but Palmer only pictures the Indian girl as unashamed, in her home environment, and dignified. The problematics mount up when we consider that these nudes, like their neoclassical cousins (that could safely depict nudity due distance in time and culture), were an acceptable excuse for presenting the nude female body, which people wanted to see. Here is the beautiful female body. But here is the female body of which one is supposed to be ashamed and should be covered up. Here is the American Indian girl partly clothed and appearing dignified. This is bad. Yet it is good. Which is it--bad or good? There are so many conflicting messages. Ultimately, never mind, the public got to see breasts carved in marble.
What the "captive" girl was was a great business decision. The sculpture was a sensation. Everyone in New York wanted to see it. Palmer's future was secure with commissions.
"The White Captive" was obviously modeled on Hiram Powers' "The Greek Slave", which also caused a sensation with over 100,000 people paying to see it when in 1847-1848 it toured the country. Frederick Douglass' "The North Star" published a commentary on the statue connecting it with the travesty of American slavery. Consider the year that "White Captive" was made. I could be completely wrong, but I've wondered if Palmer's statue (his daughter a model for the head) was intended to be also a statement on slavery, and from what I read it seems abolitionists did use the statue to direct attention to the problem in the South. Richardson's article holds that "The White Captive" was intended to echo the anti-slavery sentiments of "The Greek Slave" from which it took its inspiration. But is that the primary story, in all actuality, or is it just a secondary "echo"? Should we look upon "The White Captive" as only a companion piece to the "Dawn of Christianity", and of the impact of Indians on a Christian girl kidnapped from her family, her faith sustaining her?
Such stories of captivity were popular and Palmer's daughter stated that he was specifically inspired by Olive Oatman, who was then popular on the lecture circuit.
The Oatmans were a Latter Day Saints family who, on their way to California, had insisted on journeying through dangerous territory, though their wagon train refused and stayed behind. When they encountered Yavapai Indian, the majority of her family had been killed and she had been taken captive. A brother survived and was rescued by Pima Indians. Olive, then fourteen, was enslaved, along with a younger sister, by the Yavapai for a year. Becoming aware of her predicament, the Mohave had sympathy for her, had purchased her, and she lived with them for four years, during which they treated her as one of their own.
The Yavapai had been not long before encountered by others who were aware the Oatmans would be soon traveling through that place on their way to California, and they had left a note for the Oatmans, warning they were in grave danger of hostilities and shouldn't continue. The Oatmans had camped there, and Lorenzo, the son, noted a change in his father's behavior and later wondered if he had seen the note but hidden it from the family, deciding again to press on rather than turning back, but observably disturbed and crying alone in the wagon. They were nearly depleted of provisions, and their time and energy eaten up with hauling the contents of their wagon, by hand, up and down the mountains, their oxen-driven wagon having difficulty even when emptied. Though the survivors later remembered their father as stoic and brave, some others described him as unreasonably obstinate.
This is not a simple story. All the Indian nations of the region were suspicious of whites coming through the southwest, and for good reason. The U.S. had claimed the land in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War. But this is a story of multiple nations. Some tribes were hostile, others were not. Whereas the Yavapai had taken Olive and her sister captive, after murdering their family, and ill-treated them as slaves, Lorenzo had been helped by sympathetic Pima Indians. The Mohave had purchased Olive and her sister and she initially gave them as kind.
Oatman changed her account a little over time, but initially, she said that she and her sister (who would die when a famine struck the Mohave one year) had been raised as daughters by the chief, had been given land to farm, they were not forced to work, and that their lives were pleasant. She originally said she had been told she could leave whenever she wanted but they couldn't take her to a white settlement themselve as they feared reprisal. Whites would even be present a couple of times, for extended periods, in the camp where she lived and she never approached them. Eventually, the story of a white woman living with the Mohave had gotten around and a couple of approaches were made to convince the Mohave to hand her over. When she was first returned to white civilization, she was said to be in great distress for months, and an old friend with whom she stayed said that the way Olive spoke made one doubt their Christian civilization way of life. Later, in the company of an anti-Indian minister who would write a book on her adventures, when she went on the lecture circuit, her story changed to one of gentile enslavement, where she was a slave but treated as one of the tribe, and that she had wanted ot return to white civilization but feared letting it be known to the Mohave lest they insist upon keeping her--which somehow doesn't quite add up. In the book, she is given as repeatedly describing the Mohave as better than the Yavapai but still savage and lazy. After some years, when she heard a dignitary of the tribe was in New York, she made a trip specifically to see him and exchange stories of old times in the Mohave language. She told others they met as friends, and that he said her Indian adoptive family still hoped she would tire of living with white people and return home. Olive was tattooed and her account was this was so she would be recognized as a slave belonging to the Mohave if she escaped, but the Mohave only tattooed members of their tribe so they would be recognized in the after-life as belonging to the tribe.
What was the truth? If Palmer was inspired by Oatman's story, as his daughter said he was, he chose a complex one to depict. There was, indeed, murder and ill-treatment, but then a rescue, and she lived, she said, happily, as a member of the Mohave tribe, adopted by a family. Olive Oatman didn't come back to white civilization calling for retribution against the Mohave. She credited them with saving her when they took her in, and even saving her life during the famine when she was given sustaining food when others went without. This is a statue that was unveiled for view and attracted many visitors, in New York, when Oatman was at the same time telling her tale of both hardship and benevolence. It was also, certainly, a tale of white supremacy, about the righteousness of industrious Christians over indolent heathens.
The problem may be that Palmer simply didn't absorb the complexity of the issues and there is no actually no subtext to lend ambiguity. If we are to take the statue as intended only to inspire fear and rage over captivity, it fits in with the anti-slavery narrative of "The Greek Slave", as well as indignation over the "savage" impeding the white Christian empire occupying America from coast to coast. That may be all there is to it--Palmer alluding to and believing in the rightness of abolitionism while failing to comprehend anything but Christianity's godly destiny in white occupation and colonialism.
In 1862-1868, Chauncey Ives sculpted a piece called "The Willing Captive", in which a white woman, who has long lived with an Indian tribe that had kidnapped her as child, has married into the tribe, has fully assimilated, and doesn't want to return to white civilization.
In 1867-1872, Hiram Powers, who had sculpted "The Greek Slave" that inspired "The White Captive", carved "The Last of the Tribes", of a lone Indian woman, body clothed below the waist with a skirt, fleeing from white encroachment. One wonders if she was Powers' answer to Palmer's "Dawn of Christianity". The Indian woman, who had been confronted with the cross, had not been assimilated but now had nowhere to flee. She must eventually accompany other tribal members to the reservation.
Would Palmer have, instead, depicted her as resigned?
View the High Museum photo archive of Resignation.
My photos of Palmer's "Head of a Lady" are listed here.
"Resignation" was a gift of the West Foundation in honor of Gudmund Vigtel, director of the High Museum from 1963 thru 1991, and Michael E. Shapiro, director at the High Museum from 2000 to 2015.
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