Alfred Jacob Miller (1810-1874) 
Schim-a-co che High-Lance Crow 
Oil on paper, mounted to board 
Circa 1860 
Oval: 11 3/4 x 10 1/4 in. 

Captioned at lower-center in paint: “Schim-a-co che/ High-Lance/ Crow” with the final line expanded in ink to “A [Crow] Indian”. Numbered “108” in graphite at lower-left. A signed conservator’s photograph mounted to a letter mounted to the back of the board records the now-obscured inscription (in the same hand as the painted title) verso: “Schim-a-co-che/ High Lance/ Crow”. 
A very little peripheral darkening, with a small chip at the upper edge. Remarkably well-preserved, with impasto in the clouds at right and to the figure’s jewelry. 

Provenance 

• The collection of the artist 
• by descent from the above to Mr. L. Vernon Miller, the artist’s grand-nephew 
• by inheritance from the above to Mrs. L. Vernon Miller (Katherine, ca. 1965) 
• Graham Gallery, New York, NY, no. 28818 
• Gerald Peters (The Peters Corporation), Santa Fe, NM 
• conserved 20 September 1978 by Gustav A. Berger 
• by acquisition from the above to The John F. Eulich Collection of American Western Art, Dallas, TX (1980) 
• sold (by the above?) at Sotheby’s New York 3 December 1998, lot 177, into a Private collection 

Alfred Jacob Miller (1810–1874) was a Baltimore-born Paris-trained painter celebrated for his depictions of the people and landscape of the American interior. Although later life would see him settle in Baltimore as a portrait-painter, Miller in his late twenties set out for New Orleans and accompanied the queer Scottish aristocrat Sir William Drummond Stewart to the Rockies. There he the chance to draw the wild men of the fur trade as well as western Native Americans in the late 1830’s — just as they were being pushed to the margins by white settlement. 

In July 1858, the railroad magnate William Thompson Walters commissioned 200 portraits from Miller (at $12 each), and a picture of the subject, also numbered 108, is at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. Miller commonly made multiple iterations of a single subject, and three — all watercolor and gouache on paper — are recorded of Shim-a-co-che (the usual orthography) in addition to the present work: 

1. The Walters 37.1940.39 (Tyler 299A) 
2. The Gilcrease Museum 02.1024 (Tyler 299) 
3. The Library and Archives of Canada 2833868/1946-111 PIC (Tyler 299B) 

The present picture (Tyler 299C, mistakenly called “Oil on board”) differs in medium: oil on paper. Whereas watercolors and gouache could be easily used in the field, or else in rough circumstances, oil paint was traditionally made by the artist in their studio (the storage and sale of oil paint in metal tubes was patented in 1841, but traditionalists such as Miller were resistant). Thus an oil painting represents the culmination of a longer process for which the above pictures might be understood to be preparatory. Indeed, Miller’s having kept the picture throughout his life suggests that it was a work of  which he was particularly proud. Comparison of the four versions shows just how much more refined the oil composition is.

The work was perhaps from what has come to be known the “L. Vernon Miller Family Album,” an assemblage kept by his grand-nephew L. Vernon Miller of Baltimore. As with many of these, the work passed to Miller’s widow and was then dispersed. 

Tyler, Ron, ed. Alfred Jacob Miller: Artist of the Oregon Trail. Fort Worth, TX: Amon Carter Museum, 1982: 299C (p. 299). 
Rick Stewart. The American West: Legendary Artists of the Frontier. Dallas, 1986: pp. 18-19, illustrated.