Hiawatha is an 1874 oil-on-canvas painting by Thomas Eakins. It depicts the Native American leader Hiawatha in an impressionistic style, one of the only non-Realist paintings Eakins ever completed. It was inspired by Longfellow's 1855 epic poem The Song of Hiawatha.
The oil-on-canvas version shown here was a study for a larger watercolor piece that was ultimately accidentally destroyed in the 1940s.Simpson, Marc. "Thomas Eakins and His Arcadian Works." Smithsonian Studies in American Art 1.2 (1987): 71-95.
Description The painting depicts a scene from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, "Hiawatha's Fasting" (Canto V), where the leader fasts and prays for a solution to end the starvation of his people.
Hiawatha, an Ojibwa Native American leader, can be seen standing in silhouette in front of a corn field. Various animal-shaped clouds can be seen in the sunset: a bear, buffalo, antelope, and turkey.
Analysis On the original watercolor painting, Eakins said:
Eakins eventually began to loathe his Hiawatha paintings.
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