404 Dyck, Paul - The White Buffalo Spirit Medicine

Category Art
Auction Currency USD
Start Price NA
Estimated at 12,000.00 - 18,000.00 USD
The White Buffalo Spirit Medicine
Artist: Dyck, PaulDate of Birth: 1917-2006
Medium: Egg Tempera
Dimensions: 36 x 48
Signed: Signed lower right
Verso: Signed, titled and dated 1977 verso
Frame/Outer Dim: 48 x 60 x 3
A descendant of the great Flemish and English painter Anthony Van Dyck, Paul Dyck grew up with his pioneer family among the Blackfeet, Crow, and Cheyenne near Calgary. He was sent to Europe to study art, became an important collector and lecturer on American Indian culture and was adopted into both the Sioux and Blackfoot Nations. The White Buffalo is one of Dyck’s most important paintings, depicting a legend he had been told, one that explains the vanishing of the buffalo, and of the Buffalo Culture he himself had witnessed and shared. “The far-ranging hunters shared strange stories. They had heard of others having seen a Buffalo Spirit in human shape riding a white buffalo and following a great herd. The buffalo returned and the people were happy. Then one year the sacred life-giving herds failed to appear. The buffalo were gone forever…the Blackfeet people had lost their way of life.”
This lot is illustrated in The Story of Leanin’ Tree on page 207
A copy of the book will accompany this lot