L'iconographie amérindienne aux Salons parisiens et aux Expositions universelles françaises (1781-1914)

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This Ph. D. dissertation investigates images of Native Americans displayed at the Paris Salons and in the Fine Art sections of the Great Exhibitions of 1855, 1868, 1878, 1889 and 1900. My analysis starts with the first outbreak of the theme at the 1781 Salon and ends following its gradual dismissal at the beginning of the First World War. The body of artworks I analyze documents three main campaigns of representation marked by the history of Native Americans and Whites relations. These representations reveal an artistic figure both attractive and repulsive at the same time. The rhetoric of the disappearance of the “Noble Indian” alternates with degrading images of the “Savage Indians”. Our study reveals the origins of collective imagination and racial stereotypes that originate representations of “Indians”. But this iconography is also based on artists’ itinerancies and their migration to the West in order to meet their models. The artistic production of this small group of French and

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