Reference:4366 Portrait medal of Lone Wolf, c. 1910

Large boyish head, to left. LONE WOLF * BLACKFOOT. A wolf seated on a raised rocky ledge, in foreground, his head raised, open-jawed, to the skies; beyond, a vast open landscape. By Alice Lodberg (indistinctly signed, beneath bust). The edge stamped GORHAM CO. QABH. Bronze, cast. 102 mm. (4.05 inches) in diameter.

Condition: Nearly extremely fine.

Notes: Lone Wolf, otherwise known as Hart Merriam Schulz(1882-1970), was a celebrated member of the native American Blackfoot tribe. He was a highly accomplished artist, whose work has been compared in style to that of Frederick Remmington. He received encouragement from the artist Thomas Moran in 1906 to take formal art training and went on to enjoy great success in the 1920s with his Western paintings and sculpture. Such is the youthfulness of Lone Wolf's features that the medal might well have been made a little earlier than suggested. Alice Lodberg's medalic work is in the collection of the American Numismatic Society, although the medal of Black Foot is known only through this one example. Portrait medals of native Americans are highly unusual and the precise circumstances relating to Lone Wolf and the sitting which he gave, if indeed he did, for the taking of his profile, as well as the medal's manufacture remain a tantalising mystery. Gorham and Co. are a firm of American silversmiths, whose origins go back to the 1830s. It is not known what QABH stands for. (Thanks to Dick Johnson for help in the identification of the medallist).