OCR Text |
Show CONCLUSION Immediately following the publication of Travels. Bodmer's illustrations began to be reproduced in European and American popular books and magazines. Reinterpreted by other artists, the images appeared over and over again, as wood-engravings, as steel-engravings, and as lithographs. For the next twenty years, Bodmer himself occasionally provided illustrations to various European journals, based upon either his watercolors or his aquatints.1 Periodically, he also submitted paintings or prints of his American subjects to the Parisian salons. However, it was the repeated reproduction by other illustrators of Bodmer's American images in the popular literature of the day-particularly in America-that had a major impact upon the public's romantic perception of the American Plains Indian. This perception was not static, and the ever-growing demand for the evolving romantic image of the Plains Indian for these publications continued to influence the aquatint images well after publication of Travels. This demand forced continued alterations in the images through the years, in order to accommodate the changing attitudes of the public whose taste was reflected in its popular books and magazines. Thus, while Bodmer's illustrations remained the major source of ethnological information regarding Plains Indian culture, they were also instrumental in forming the enduring romantic misconceptions of this culture both in America and abroad. |