Alfred Jacob Miller
Date:
1865
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Size:
Width: 34 3/4″
Height: 28″

In this painting, two Indigenous men ride horseback and pursue an elk during a hunt. Alfred Jacob Miller painted this scene from an observational sketch after attending an 1837 gathering of multiple tribes living in the Great Plains region near Horse Creek in present-day Wyoming.

Miller’s journal entries from this experience speak to the riders’ extensive knowledge of the terrain and behavior of the elk. Riding at full gallop, the hunters drove the animal into the treacherous Platte River, which had grown up to three-quarters of a mile wide due to recent rains. Miller learned from these Indigenous hunters, “Even in the water [the elk] is a dangerous customer, for he has a trick of using his long horns to great advantage, and keeping his enemies at bay.”

Gift of Alfred J. Miller BMA 1946.3

A Conversation about the Horses

Transcript

[Aaron Henkin] Hi, Aaron Henkin here from WYPR in Baltimore, and I’m looking at this with someone who
is fascinated personally by horses. She also happens to be the senior curator at the Smithsonian American
Art Museum, Eleanor Harvey.
[Eleanor Harvey] I have to say my favorite detail in this painting is the face of the gray horse in the
foreground. He seems to be the single most intent creature in this entire picture. We can immediately tell
that Alfred Jacob Miller’s painting was made during the middle of the 19th century. Look at the way the
horse is leaping into the gallop. The front legs are outstretched, their hind legs equally so behind. It’s a
hobby horse gallop, as opposed to the way that we now understand that horses move. By the 1870s, the
photographer Edward Muybridge would conduct motion studies that would allow us to see how a horse’s
four legs move during a gallop.