Samuel Seymour (artist)
1832) was a painter, engraver, and illustrator who documented Native American people and the scenery from expeditions of Stephen Harriman Long in 1819, 1820, and 1823.
Birch and Seymour worked together to create two variations of an illustration of Brooklyn Heights on a single engraving plate.
[9] As an associate of the academy, his social circle included the Peale family, John Wesley Jarvis, Thomas Birch, Benjamin Latrobe, and William Rush.
[9] The Academy's collection includes Study of a Bird made by Seymour after Anne Bartram[10] and Man directing woman into a cave, an engraving of John James Barralet's work,[11] and other illustrations.
[12] Most of the works that he exhibited at the Academy were plein air landscapes[13] and yet he mainly focused his energy on his commercial engraving business.
[4] He became increasingly interested in landscape paintings and traveled to the countryside with Sully and along the Schuylkill River with Jarvis and Birch to make sketches.
[9] One of the principal means Seymour devised to unify his geologic landscapes or "scenographic geologic illustrations" both compositionally and thematically was his artistic focus on origination, a typos with relevance for a range of intellectual endeavors and institutions including the nation's oldest and most prestigious organizations for the advancement of knowledge, the American Philosophical Society and the Academy of Natural Sciences, both of Philadelphia.These organizations helped define the objective for Stephen Harriman Long's scientific expeditions.
He, along with Titian Peale, were the first trained artists to explore the western frontier and capture scenic landscapes and Native Americans.
[5] He was specifically tasked to "furnish sketches of landscapes, whenever we meet with any distinguished for their beauty or grandeur... [and] to paint miniature likenesses, or portraits if required, of distinguished Indians, and exhibit groups of savages engaged in celebrating their festivals, or sitting in council, and in general illustrate any subject, that may be deemed appropriate to his art.
Seymour captured the image of the Native American chiefs crossing the river to the expedition's campsite to meet with Captain John R.
[23] Over three weeks, Captain Bell's party traveled down the Arkansas River and saw Arapaho heading out to do battle, Comanche returning with their wounded after a fight with the Otoes, and Cheyenne after they raided a group of Pawnee.
[5] He created 150 drawings of Native Americans, wildlife, and scenery,[26] including the river valleys and Rocky Mountains.
"[17] In the field, Seymour used a kind of shorthand to create a quick sketch to be embellished for the metal engraving plate.
[5] Biographer John G. McDermott believes that Seymour "was the first man with any artistic skill" to travel through the area with the intention of capturing scenic landscapes of present-day Minnesota.
