Wooden Indian

Art Historical Context

**Wooden Indian** by Robert W.R. Taylor created around 1940, captures the vibrant essence of a classic American folk art icon: the carved wooden figure of a Native American chief, long a staple outside tobacco shops. This detailed rendering belongs to the *Index of American Design*, groundbreaking Works Progress Administration (WPA project from the 1930s that employed artists during the Great Depression to document American crafts and designs. Taylor's work preserves these cultural artifacts through meticulous precision, highlighting their role in 19th-century commercial life. Executed in watercolor, graphite, and colored pencil on paper (35.7 x 24.7 cm), the piece showcases the Index's signature style—hyper-realistic and richly colored to convey texture, form, and historical authenticity. Watercolor's fluidity paired with graphite's fine lines and colored pencil's depth allowed artists like Taylor to replicate the wood's grain, feathers, and bold hues as if viewing the original sculpture firsthand. These figures, while rooted in stereotype, represent a uniquely American vernacular art form, blending craftsmanship with commerce. Displayed at the National Gallery of Art, Taylor's depiction invites us to appreciate how such everyday objects shaped national identity, bridging folk tradition and modern preservation efforts.

About the Artist

Robert W.R. Taylor · 1855–present

Robert W.R. Taylor was an American artist active in the mid-twentieth century who contributed significantly to the Index of American Design, the Works Progress Administration project that employed artists to document American folk art and decorative culture through exacting watercolor renderings. The National Gallery of Art, which received the Index collection in 1943, holds seventy-one works by T...