Richard Norris Brooke, born Warrenton, - Burial of a Papoose - n.d. - T-Shirt

A feathered figure stands at the stern of a canoe beside a small wrapped bundle, painted in a framed scene of pale water, pink rock and dark pines.

Visual Elements & Composition

The image sits inside a band of red and black that runs along the edges, with a row of stylised marks along the lower and right sides. Within that frame, the pale sky blue and white water take up most of the view. A man in a long feathered headdress holds an upright paddle with both hands at the back of the canoe, while a pale pink rock face rises behind him above a grey shoulder of stone. Dark conifers line the right side. The bundle, bound in light cloth, rests in the bottom of the boat on the right. The painting is worked in watercolour and gouache with ink outlines, and the water is built from flat bands of blue, white and brown with fine contour lines.

Meaning & Symbolism

The title names the subject as a burial, and the wrapped bundle carries that meaning. The standing figure with the paddle conveys the act of carrying the dead across water. Water and shoreline in this kind of scene mark the boundary between the living community and the departed. Canoe journeys like this appear in many nineteenth century American depictions of Native life. The flat, decorative handling and the bordered frame give the picture the character of an illustrated plate. It was painted by Richard Norris Brooke, an American painter born in Warrenton, Virginia, who made a body of work on Native American subjects for a public eager for images of the frontier.

Wearing a Scene Across the Chest

A tee is a canvas worn at a distance, so the composition reads best as a whole: the red border frames the chest, and the canoe and figure sit in the centre where the eye lands first. The quiet, still water and the solemn mood carry across the shirt, letting the wrapped bundle and paddle stay legible from a few feet away.