John Mix Stanley

Born in Canandaigua, New York, John Mix Stanley became one of the most significant artists of the American frontier but also one of the most tragic in that three separate fires essentially destroyed his lifetime’s work.

He was raised in upstate New York where his father had a tavern that many Indians and other frontier types visited. At age 14, he became an orphan and apprenticed to a coach maker. But looking for better work, he moved to Detroit in 1834 and became a house and sign painter and subsequently trained with European educated James Bowman, who saw one of his signs and admired his work.