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English

The White Captive

1857–58; carved 1858–59
Not on view
The White Captive portrays a young woman who has been abducted in her sleep (her nightgown hangs from the tree trunk) and held captive by Native Americans. Bound at the wrists, she clenches her left fist behind her back in defiance. Palmer was commended for his choice of a “thoroughly American” subject, which consciously alluded to ongoing frontier skirmishes between Indigenous peoples and white settlers. In 1859 the marble went on view in New York, and the exhibition, along with that of Frederic Edwin Church’s Heart of the Andes (09.95), emerged as the high point of that autumn’s art season.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: The White Captive
  • Artist: Erastus Dow Palmer (American, Pompey, New York 1817–1904 Albany, New York)
  • Date: 1857–58; carved 1858–59
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Marble
  • Dimensions: 65 x 20 1/4 x 17 in. (165.1 x 51.4 x 43.2 cm)
  • Credit Line: Bequest of Hamilton Fish, 1894
  • Object Number: 94.9.3
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

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