Edwin Willard DEMING
1860–1942, USA

Deming was born in Ashland, OH, on 26 August 1860. He was raised in western Illinois, where he first became interested in Native American culture. While in his teens he traveled farther west to sketch Native Americans in what was then still recognized as their territory; he also showed a facility for modeling animals in clay. He went to Chicago, IL, to study business law at his parents’ insistence in 1880, but quickly gave that up in favor of art. In 1883 he went to New York City, where he studied at the Art Students League of New York. In the following year he went to France, where he studied in Paris at the Académie Julian with Jules Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger. He was, however, for the most part self-taught. Returning to the United States in 1885 he went to work as a painter of cycloramas. In 1887 he traveled to the Southwest, where he painted the Apache and the Pueblo, and Oregon, where he painted the Umatillas. He later visited the Crow and Sioux nations in Montana and the Dakotas respectively, and was adopted by the Blackfeet. When he married in 1892, the couple honeymooned in the Southwest among the Navajo, the Zuñi, and the Hopi. He lived in New York City for most of his professional life, but often journeyed in the West.

Deming wrote and illustrated articles on Native American life for Outing and other periodicals, working on occasion with De Cost Smith (qv) and Frederic Remington (qv). He also illustrated the eleven books that his wife, Therese O. Deming, wrote beginning in the 1890s. In addition to his Western and Native American subjects on canvas he modeled a number of animal sculptures, which were cast in bronze; he was particularly interested in bears.

Deming was a member of the National Society of Mural Painters and the National Arts Club, both in New York City, and the Washington (DC) Art Club. He exhibited works at the National Academy of Design in New York City, among them his paintings His First Game in 1892 and The Chinnook [sic] Fisherman in 1902 and his sculpture A Friendly Struggle in 1910. He showed similar works at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, including his sculptures The Fight and Bear and Turtle in 1909. In 1916 he showed several works at the Art Institute of Chicago, including Fight Between a Panther and a Grizzly Bear, The American Bison, and Antelope. He also exhibited with the American Watercolor Society in New York City. He received medals at the American Art Society of Philadelphia in 1892; the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, MO, in 1904; and the Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, CA, in 1915. His murals of Elk and Moose in private residences in New York were reproduced in the 1916 brochure of the National Society of Mural Painters, as were his five panels of Native Americans, moose, and elk owned at the time by the noted naturalist and artist Ernest Thompson Seton (qv). Osage Warrior, an equestrian painting, is in the Denver (CO) Art Museum. The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, has his Group of Elk, Wind River Mountains, Wyoming. The Frederic Remington Art Museum in Ogdensburg, NY, has several of his sculptures, including Indian and Bear, Two Wolves, Bear and Frog, and Sleeping Dog. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has his The Fight, a bronze of a struggle between a cougar and a bear, and Mutual Surprise, a bronze of a bear cub and a turtle. An example of The Fight also exists at Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, SC. Other institutions holding his work include the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison; the Whitney Museum of American Art and the National Arts Club, both in New York City; the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, IN; the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art in Fort Worth, TX; the Montclair (NJ) Art Museum; and the Brooklyn (NY) Museum of the Arts and Sciences.

Deming died in New York City on 15 October 1942.

Source: http://www.redfoxfineart.com