1898 Trans-Mississippi Models

I am reviving this thread because I am now curious. I had always interpreted the 10c Hardships of Emigration scene as the man holding a pistol ready to put the horse out of its misery. That was just from looking at it.

All the commentary I can find on the stamp and the painting by Heaton that underlies it says that he is trying to revive the horse.

Which is possible, I suppose. The image of the painting upthread is not sharply enough detailed to see whether the man is holding a pistol or grabbing a harness strap. The stamp, even under magnification, simply is not clear.

But how can you revive a horse flat on its side by grabbing a harness strap? I think I can see in the painting upthread the butt of a pistol emerging below the man's palm but it might just be the harness strap around the horse's shoulders that is behind his hand in the painting.

Presumably all the commentary is correct. Has anyone seen a clearer photograph of the original painting that might resolve this question?

Curious minds wish to know.

Edited to add: whatever it is that is coming out of the man's hand, if it were a pistol barrel, doesn't quite seem to be aimed at the horse's head, so that speaks in favor of the "reviving" interpretation. But it's very hard to guage the trajectory on a painting in which the viewer is more or less at a right angle to the trajectory. I can just persuade myself that it might be pointing toward the horse's head. But probably not.

See the bottom of page 10 of the 2013 Siegel auction catalog for the issue. It's online here:

http://www.siegelauctiongalleries.u...056/1056.pdf

It reproduces the painting, apparently from a secondary source, as it says the painting was destroyed by fire. To me, a reasonable interpretation is that the horse is already dead, and that the emigrant is using both his arms to remove the harness, which would have had continued value. And that fits the powerful theme: in the face of death, one must soldier on.

I agree with cjp's observation. If the father was about to shoot the horse, it seems to me that the wife and kids would be cringing rather than just passively looking on.

This makes sense. I hadn't thought to look at what his left arm was doing, it's barely visible alongside the right arm. But at least I don't have to believe the "reviving the horse" explanation on Mystic's Web site and elsewhere.

The dead horse had considerable value too, as meat, although they all surely preferred to have the horse alive and able to draw that wagon, rather than as meat. Removing the harness would be the first step in harvesting the meat.

That Siegel paragraph was not well constructed. It raises more questions about chronology than it answers. One way to read the first sentence is that the original painting was damaged by fire, and in 1931 was finally destroyed by the heirs. Another way to read it is that the painting was fire damaged in 1931, and then disposed of by the heirs. Either way, the next sentence jumps back in time to say the stamp design was engraved following a retouched print. That sentence continues by pointing out that the original for this print was "discovered" in 1992. Now, was that the "original" before being retouched, or was that the actual retouched print itself? Of course we can surmise and guess our way through, as if we know the answers. But the writer of the paragraph really needs to sort it out.

Nonetheless, if the BEP followed the procedure it, and the BankNote companies before it, usually used for original art, they had photographs made of the actual painting and used one or more of those to model the engraved design. I suspect, without good evidence, that what was found in 1992 was one of those, possibly the very print that was the original model. But there is no reason to suppose that they had to settle for a photo print because the original painting had already been irreparably damaged in 1898.

I doubt that the damage to the painting had occurred that early, but I cannot support that without better information. However, even if working entirely from photographs, it seems odd that they would adopt as a stamp design an image that was no longer intact in its original.

Russ, you said "The Post Office department originally intended to issue this series as bi-color stamps", that's true, but now for the reason they were not bi-color stamps!

Because of the Spanish American War, made it impossible to issue these stamp in bi-color. Now you know the rest of the story!

Cheers

Dave