Prairie on Fire

Charles Deas

Brooklyn Museum photograph

Object Label

Prairie Fire takes the classic damsel-in-distress story line and transports it to the American West. Panicked horses and frantic riders race through a prairie as a fire rages in the background. In choosing this setting, Charles Deas drew on popular imagery in nineteenth-century visual art and literature, including James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Prairie.

Caption

Charles Deas American, 1818–1867. Prairie on Fire, 1847. Oil on canvas, 28 3/4 x 35 15/16 in. (73 x 91.3 cm) frame: 38 1/2 × 45 3/8 × 5 in. (97.8 × 115.3 × 12.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alastair B. Martin, the Guennol Collection, 48.195. No known copyright restrictions (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 48.195_SL1.jpg)

Gallery

Not on view

Collection

American Art

Title

Prairie on Fire

Date

1847

Medium

Oil on canvas

Classification

Painting

Dimensions

28 3/4 x 35 15/16 in. (73 x 91.3 cm) frame: 38 1/2 × 45 3/8 × 5 in. (97.8 × 115.3 × 12.7 cm)

Signatures

Signed lower right: "1847. / C Deas."

Credit Line

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alastair B. Martin, the Guennol Collection

Accession Number

48.195

Rights

No known copyright restrictions

This work may be in the public domain in the United States. Works created by United States and non-United States nationals published prior to 1923 are in the public domain, subject to the terms of any applicable treaty or agreement. You may download and use Brooklyn Museum images of this work. Please include caption information from this page and credit the Brooklyn Museum. If you need a high resolution file, please fill out our online application form (charges apply). The Museum does not warrant that the use of this work will not infringe on the rights of third parties, such as artists or artists' heirs holding the rights to the work. It is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions before copying, transmitting, or making other use of protected items beyond that allowed by "fair use," as such term is understood under the United States Copyright Act. The Brooklyn Museum makes no representations or warranties with respect to the application or terms of any international agreement governing copyright protection in the United States for works created by foreign nationals. For further information about copyright, we recommend resources at the United States Library of Congress, Cornell University, Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums, and Copyright Watch. For more information about the Museum's rights project, including how rights types are assigned, please see our blog posts on copyright. If you have any information regarding this work and rights to it, please contact copyright@brooklynmuseum.org.

Frequent Art Questions

  • Why is the girl hanging/fainted on the horse in this picture?

    The artist, Charles Deas, has taken the typical 19th century novel narrative of the "damsel-in-distress" and brought it to the American frontier. The man on horseback is rescuing the woman from the fire that is sweeping across the prairie. She may have fainted from the smoke, or perhaps just from the shock of the situation! It's a very dramatic scene. Eastern urban audiences were interested in the dangerous aspects of Western life in the 1800s, and artists like Deas gave them the vicarious thrills they were seeking.

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