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Lewis and Clark Expedition
An Artist Looks at History ---The Lewis & Clark Expedition 1804-1806 During the winter of 2004 and summer of 2005 the Kay Smith visited, photographed and painted sites and locations of the Lewis & Clark Trail for an exhibition at the Lewis & Clark State Historic Site in Hartford, Illinois. The exhibit was planned as part of the Lewis & Clark Commemoration Bicentennial. Hartford, Illinois was the site of Fort Dubois, the first encampment of the Expedition in the winter of 1803/04 and it was at this site on the Mississippi River just across from St. Louis,Missouri, the Reenactment of the Lewis & Clark Expedition was launched May 14, 2004. Two years later tumultuous crowds greeted them as their dugouts carried the buckskin clad men to St. Louis September 23, 2006. A major part of her research on the Expedition and especially on early St. Louis was done at the Newberry Library in Chicago and the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis. Kay’s painting of the site of the expedition beginning is a very detailed recreation from her imagination. This is a painting of an overview of Saint Louis circa 1806 with the Corps of Discovery in their dugout canoes coming down the Mississippi River to dock at the foot of Market Street. The townspeople, 1000 strong, line the banks of the 40 foot bluff the old city stood on-- the site of the Gateway Arch today. She goes on to describe the scene:
St. Louis Welcoming Lewis & Clark, September 23.1806 The day was overcast; the time 12 o'clock noon. Those thought dead were returning. Jubilant townspeople, 1000 strong, line the 40 foot bluffs, cheering and waving white cloths of welcome. The artist used the technique of a zoom lens to show a close-up of Lewis & Clark in their dugouts responding with the same enthusiasm as the crowds. Lewis is holding the large American flag, the symbol of their authority, he had carried to the Pacific Ocean and back. Smaller replicas of this flag were given to scores of Indian chiefs and braves. St. Louis began as a fur trading post founded and laid out by Pierre Laclede Linguest, a French fur trader from New Orleans, in 1764. He predicted from the beginning that "this settlement will become one of the finest cities in America." It became a part of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase in 1804. Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri is another painting in this series. The spectacular stainless steel Gateway Arch (630 feet high), was designed by architect Eero Saarinen for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial and is symbolic of Missouri as the "gateway to the West", in commemoration of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804-1806. Beneath the Arch is the earliest church in St. Louis, the Roman Catholic Church known as the Old Cathedral. The property on the waterfront was set aside for religious purposes by Pierre Laclede Linguest, a french fur trader, in the spring of 1764 when he founded the village of St. Louis. This church was built between 1831 and 1834 on the same site of the first wooden church built in 1764. Southern Illinois is the site of Kay Smith's hometown of Vandalia, Illinois about 60 miles north of Hartford. An alumna of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she was elected Artist Laureate of Illinois in 1994 (a lifetime appointment) by the prestigious Lincoln Academy of Illinois for her "dedication to those principles of democracy and humanity exemplified by the great Illinoisan whose name we bear." Years of painting and studying our nation's heritage have given the artist an unique perspective on the events that shaped America. Her lectures describing her experiences and work are stimulating, entertaining and informative.
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Contributor's Note
Kay Smith is an encyclopedia of information and anecdotes about United States history. She is, as far as I am concerned, “A National Treasure.”
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http://www.abstractandincolor.com
| http://www.julierichman.com
   
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