THE PRINCE AND THE PAINTER

Karl Bodmer was a European of many names and accomplishments, but his reputation received a transatlantic boost in 1832. That year Prince Maximilian, a Prussian explorer, ethnologist and naturalist, was planning an expedition into the North American frontier and, in a rare moment of humility, realized he needed a professional artist to supplement his own considerable skill as an illustrator. He tapped Bodmer for the task.

Born in 1782, Alexander Philipp Maximilian was the hereditary ruler of Wied-Neuwied, a Prussian-annexed state along the Rhine River south of Bonn. During the Napoléonic wars he had served as a major of hussars in the Prussian army. In early 1815, with the exiled French emperor seemingly neutralized on Elba in the Mediterranean, the young prince, inspired by the writings of Prussian explorer-scientist Alexander von Humboldt, had taken military