Jerome Thompson (1814–1886)

Similar in spirit to Thompson's earlier Western images, Gathering Waterlilies shows an abundance of wildflowers and marsh grasses along a riverbank with a flock of migrating geese dotting the distant sky.  A young girl sits in a canoe gathering waterlilies, while a young Indian boy looks on.  The subject of this painting was most likely derived from a visit Thompson made to La Pointe, Wisconsin to see his sister, a missionary working with the Ojibwa Indians.    Thompson had visited her there on one of his trips in the late 1850s, and made several plein air sketches of the Native Americans that he later incorporated into his paintings.  The location, however, could be an assemblage of the artist’s many spontaneous studies of the Minnesota wilds.