Edwin Willard Deming
1860-1942
Buffalo with Skull
bronze
inscribed: EWDEMING
inscribed: AMER. ART F'DRY. N.Y.
6 1/4 x 8 1/4 x 3 in.

Provenance:
From a Private Collection

Literature:
Beatrice Gilman Proske, Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture, Brookgreen Gardens: Brookgreen, SC, 1968, pp. 160-162.
Maurice Frink, “Edwin W. Deming: ‘That Man, He Paint!,’” American Scene, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1971).
Thomas G. Lamb, Eight Bears: A Biography of E.W. Deming (1860-1942), Griffin Books, Inc. Publishers: Oklahoma City, OK, 1978.

Born in Ashland, Ohio, Edwin Willard Deming moved with his family to western Illinois before the age of one and grew up on the prairie with Sac and Fox Indians as his playmates and spear fishing, beaver trapping, riding, and shooting as his games. His first paintings were done as a child using house paint he had scraped off of discarded containers. In 1880, Deming’s father sent him to law school in Chicago where he stayed just long enough to affirm his intention of becoming an artist. In 1883 Deming moved to New York to begin his formal artistic training at the Art Students League. The following year he traveled to Paris to continue his studies with Gustav Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre at the Académie Julian for one year.

Deming believed his artistic mission was to paint Native Americans thereby “preserving the life of the old, unspoiled Indian.” In 1887, two years after returning to the states, Deming took the first of many sketching trips to the far West. He visited the Apaches and the Pueblo Indians in the southwest before journeying north to Oregon to see the Umatilla Peoples. Wherever Deming traveled he sketched, drew, and made extensive notes, later translating these into paintings and sculptures upon his return to his studios in New York and Connecticut.

In 1893, Deming collaborated with fellow artist DeCost Smith, writing and illustrating two articles for Outing magazine. He further illustrated several of his wife’s books on Indian life and western animals including Indian Child Life, Red Folk and White Folk, and American Animal Life. During the First World War, Deming served as a Captain in the U.S. Army’s camouflage department at Camp Benning, Georgia. After the war he returned to his art, painting and sculpting until his death.

Better known for his paintings and murals, several of which are in The American Museum of Natural History, Deming only modeled a few small bronzes most of which were created between 1905 and 1910. Unlike his paintings’ focus on Indian life, many of his bronzes, such as Buffalo with Skull, focused on animals of the American West.

The bronze appears to be in very good condition with light dust and wax residue in the crevasses.