2025 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 280280 / 354 • View Catalog •
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VERSO
Label, Heffel Gallery, Vancouver, Canada
Wilfred Langdon Kihn was an American illustrator and portrait painter, best known for his depictions of North American Indians. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1898, Kihn studied at the Art Students League of New York from 1916 to 1917, before traveling west. Kihn was awestruck by the ceremonial activities and dress he saw, and he sought to create documentary images of a culture he perceived to be at risk. Between 1920 and 1937, Kihn made numerous trips to the western United States and Canada, forging relationships with the Laguna and Acoma tribes in New Mexico and with various Blackfoot and Stoney tribes in Montana and Alberta.
Kihn’s Indian Days depicts the Banff, Canada, festival of the same name, and the image was used on multiple Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) promotional posters in the 1920s. The festival, held annually from the early 1900s through the 1970s, was a major attraction in the CPR’s campaign to promote tourism in the Rocky Mountains. In close proximity to the CPR Banff Springs Hotel, members of the Morley tribe (Stoney Nation) held a parade, a powwow, and various sporting events. As Kihn depicts in vivid color, the festival was a spectacle and celebration, rather than a display of authentic, contemporary First Nations life. The figures in Indian Days wear a combination of traditional dress, western garb, and even a few striped Hudson’s Bay wool blankets. Kihn’s fluorescent palette and bold blocks of color translated well to the CPR silkscreen posters, which are now themselves collectables today.
PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Alberta
Heffel Fine Art Auctions, Vancouver, Canada, 2019
Private collection, British Columbia, Canada
