John+Caspar+Wild

=John Caspar Wild= Original Author: Aimee Tacey, ENG340 FL10 Revision Author:

John Caspar Wild, or John Casper Wild (both spellings seem to be acceptable) was an artist born in or near Zurich, Switzerland. (Reps 216). He came to Davenport, Ia in 1844. He was the very first artist to spend a lot of time in Davenport. He was a portrait painter, lithographer, and landscape artist. But his main love was the Mississippi river. He created beautiful, artistic representations of many different river views from St. Louis to Dubuque. (Figgeart.org). A few of the notable areas he depicted include Muscatine, Galena, and the Quad Cities’ own Arsenal Island. (Reps 217).

Wild painted a scene of Fort Armstrong on Arsenal Island from the perspective of the Davenport side of the Mississippi River titled //Old Ferry - View of Rock Island Blockhouse//. The painting shows Fort Armstrong in the distance, before the Lock and Dam system near Arsenal Island was in place. Caves are visible in the rock beneath the fort. Today, these caves are submerged beneath the surface of the Mississippi. Upon the Davenport shoreline is John Wilson’s ferry landing. Interestingly enough, Antoine LeClaire is waiting from the perch of his buggy for the ferry to arrive. (Figgeart.org). The Mississippi is glassy and serene as a sunrise glints on the water’s surface. The actual sun is hidden behind a tree, giving the tree an ambient glow. The civilization is somewhat crude and new but the nature involved is beautifully timeless and contrastingly peaceful.

Before Wild came to live in Davenport, he first left Switzerland to live in Paris, France. It was there that he became an artisit. He painted views of the towns, including Paris and Venice for some fifteen years. Then somewhere around 1831, he decided to come to the States He lived in Philadelpha for a few years but moved on to Cincinnati in 1835. After two years in Cincinnati he decided to return to Philadelphia to elaborate on the already numerous scenes he had painted of that city. (Reps 216). When he had completed his paintings of Philadelphia, he moved to St. Louis and created many lithographs of cityscapes there. When that project was finished, he began traveling along the Mississippi, creating lithographs of the major cities he encountered along the way. These cityscapes began publication in July of 1841. But Wild wasn’t ready to stop the trek. He continued to travel north along the Mississippi, painting and lithographing as he went, until reaching Davenport in 1844. (Reps 217).

Wild had a difficult life. The constant travel effected him. He was described by someone who knew him as someone who “had neither humor of his own, nor an appreciation of humor in others. He looked tragedy, thought tragedy, and his conversation outside of business and art, was never much more cheerful than tragedy.” He was described as “a tall spare man of about forty years, with long raven black hair, whiskers and moustache, and restless brown eyes. He had, at times a worn and haggard look, the result, doubtless, of ill health, and a lifelong battle with the world for the bare means of subsistence.” He died in 1846, of illness, in Davenport, Ia. (Reps 217). But his //Old Ferry - View of Rock Island Blockhouse// lives as Quad City history.


 * Works Cited **

The Figge. __[]__.

Reps, John William. “Views and viewmakers of urban America: lithographs of towns and cities in the United States and Canada, notes on the artists and publishers, and a union catalog of their work, 1825-1925.” University of Missouri Press. 1984.

See also The Rivers

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