Description

Pocahontas – Copy Painting
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Digital – tmpx – September 29, 2020
Painting – tmpx – September 30, 2020
Painting – tmpx – On command
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Hahnemühle Fine Art Printing

Themes: history, allegory (visual arts)
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Size P30 Original cm : 120 x 150 x 0.3
Size P30 Original inch : 47,2 x 59 x 0.12
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Signed by the author
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Pocahontas – Copy Painting

Neo expressionism artwork tmpx – Pocahontas – Copy Painting
Here > Original Artwork tmpx

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The Indian Princess Pocahontas, who is one of the founding myths of the United States, is at the origin of literary and cinematographic legends and adaptations.

Myself inspired by the documentary “ The true story of Pocahontas ”
directed by Molly Hermann, Rob Lyall 2017

The true story of Pocahontas By Yann Lagarde

Disney heroine, princess of the “New World”, the Pocahontas myth was constructed as a positive story of colonization. Its real story, however, is much more tragic.
Pocahontas was born around 1595 near the English colony of Virginia. She is one of the daughters of the chief of the great tribe of the Powhatans. Its real name, Matoaka, means “little snow feather”. She is nicknamed “Pocahontas”, “little shameless” because of her mischievous character.

The legend of rescue

In 1607, she crossed paths with English settlers who settled in Jamestown, in the territory of her tribe. One of the settlers, explorer John Smith is one day captured by the Powhatan Indians. According to legend, he is put to death by the chief of the tribe, but he is saved in extremis by the young Pocahontas who asks to spare the foreigner.

A beautiful story, but a story invented a posteriori by John Smith to increase his own legend.
It is the romantic cliché of the explorer’s rescue by the beautiful native, like Ariadne coming to the aid of Theseus.
John Smith and Pocahontas never had an affair. At best they met on the outskirts of Jamestown Fort.

Captive pocahontas

At this time, the colony of Jamestown was decimated by cold, famine and epidemics. The Powhatans nonetheless brought food to their settler neighbors.
Yet tensions are growing between the two camps. One day, Pocahontas is captured by an English captain to put pressure on the Indians. She is being held hostage in Jamestown. She is forced to dress like a European, to learn the language.
She is also converted to Christianity and renamed Rebecca.
John Rolfe, an Englishman from the colony falls in love with her and proposes to her. Marriage actually serves several interests. For the father of Pocahontas, the chief of the tribe, it is about easing tensions.
For the Virginia company, appeasement is good for trade. For the English, marriage shows the triumph of “civilization” over the natives. Pocahontas gives birth to a son, Thomas.

The English court

In 1616, Pocahontas and her husband left the continent to come to the court of England.
She is treated like “a princess of the New World” but she is mostly exhibited as an object of exotic curiosity. She takes part in a masquerade, in the presence of King James I. She is immortalized by a Dutch painter, who whitens her features and presents her as a European.
Its story serves the colonial propaganda of the Kingdom of England. For the English, it was the virtuous princess who renounced her culture for Christian civilization. But the unhappy Pocahontas did not get used to London life and fell ill, possibly with epidemic dysentery.
She died on March 21, 1617, on the boat that brought her back to Virginia. She is buried on the banks of the Thames, far from her native land.
Pocahontas is one of the few Native American women whose history has survived to us.
In folklore, she embodies the original virginity of American civilization. A pacified alternative history where the Indians would not have been exterminated but would have mixed with the settlers and assimilated in the nation.
Many of the great Virginia families will claim Pocahontas, including former first lady Nancy Reagan. In 2018, Trump called Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas,” an ironic nickname to mock the former senator’s Native American origins.