A biography of French artist Jacques Le Moyne, who spent a period in Florida during the 1560s and recorded important scenes there of native life and culture. Harvey tells Le Moyne's story and its aftermath, including of the fairly recent identification of a number of Le Moyne's artworks. Nicely done. ( )

I was surprised to see this was a biography because I didn't think much was known about Le Moyne. The author did find some stuff that isn't in other books about the French settlement in colony but half of the book was stuff I had already read. Le Moyne's connection to the Roanoke was interesting and the reasons given for the odd things about the paintings gave this book some distinction from the other books I read. I think he should have wrote the book as Historical Fiction because of the lack personal material on the artist. or break up his work into magazine stories because some of the material would interest people interested in embroidery or still life art would not make it through the history of the Religious Wars. ( )

The many black and white sketches in the book are facinating. They bring the reader so close to the true facts of this early history.

A powerful, highly recommended art history, October 12, 2008
By Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

PAINTER IN A SAVAGE LAND; THE STRANGE SAGA OF THE FIRST EUROPEAN ARTIST IN NORTH AMERICA is a top pick for any art history collection: it offers a well-researched yet lively survey of one Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues, the first European artist to travel around the U.S. capturing its wonders I pencil and paint. In 1564 he and three hundred other French Protestants landed off the coast of Florida - he was one of the few to live the experience, returning home to create dozens of illustrations of America's Native Americans. A powerful, highly recommended art history, this also deserves a place in any collection strong in early American history.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Another review

In 1564, Le Moyne accompanied a party of roughly 300 other French Protestants to found a colony, Fort Caroline, near present-day Jacksonville, Fla. He was apparently (if we believe the patchy visual documentation) an eyewitness to negotiations and altercations with local Indians, and he survived the destruction of the colony, the following year, by Spanish forces. Whether Le Moyne's drawings survived remains a mystery; engravings supposedly based on his watercolor sketches of the Timucua people were later published in Germany. Mannerist in style, the prints make the idealized Indians, with their sculpted limbs and flowing locks, look like they've stepped out of Michelangelo's Garden of Eden. Like so much else in his life, Le Moyne's original artwork has vanished, however, and inconsistencies in the engravings—the Indians brandish Brazilian weapons and wield European farm implements—suggest that he may have made later drawings from memory after his return to France or that the engraver "improved" on his originals. It's legitimate to wonder whether there actually were originals.

The missing paintings are just one of many "gaps" in the biographical record. Nothing is known of Le Moyne's 30 years of life before his departure for the New World, nor do we know what he did during the 15 years after his return, wounded and wretched after a near-miraculous Atlantic crossing without a pilot or sufficient food and water. What we do know is that the late-16th century was a dangerous time for French Protestants, when religious wars erupted into periodic fits of ethnic cleansing. Drawing on research of previous scholars, especially art historian Paul Hulton, Harvey picks up the trail when Le Moyne has moved his base of operations to London circa 1580, where he becomes an adviser to the great Sir Walter Raleigh, who had New World schemes of his own.