Artist

(b. 1828, Siegburg, d. 1862, Saint Louis)

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Details

American painter and photographer of German birth. When he was 15 years old he moved with his family from Germany to St. Louis, Missouri. Prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, the Missouri River was the centre of America's fur trading industry. The diverse people and scenery along this route inspired numerous artists, including the young Wimar. During his years in St. Louis, he became fascinated with the Western Frontier, the Native Americans, and the objects they traded. These interests, and their inherent conflicts, become the focal point of Wimar's career. From 1846 to 1850 he studied painting under the St Louis artist Leon de Pomarede (1807-92). During the 1850's, Düsseldorf was the primary destination for American artists studying in Europe because of Emanuel Leutze and the Düsseldorf Academy influence. In 1852 Wimar continued his studies at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, where he worked with Josef Fay (1813-75) and Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze until about 1856. In 1858, having once more based himself in St Louis, he travelled up the Mississippi in order to draw and photograph Indians. During the last years of his life Wimar chose not to perpetuate the romanticized myth of the American West, but to create works that objectively document its land and people before both became extinct. He joined a party of the American Fur Trading Company and made several journeys between 1858 and 1860 up the Mississippi, Missouri and Yellowstone rivers in search of Indian subjects. In 1861 Wimar was commissioned to decorate the rotunda of the St Louis Court-house with scenes of the settlement of the West (mostly destroyed). //

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Category	Artists
Artists by letter	W
Artist nationality	American