Robert Cavelier de La Salle

Armed with a pistol and sword and dressed in a rugged frock coat and knee-high, laced boots, the pose of explorer De La Salle is notably swashbuckling. He stands on a pedestal with his right foot perched on a tree stump and his left hand on his engaged, left hip.
Photo ©: Jyoti Srivastava

Title

Robert Cavelier de La Salle

Date

1889

Artist

Count Jacques de la Laing (1858-1917)

Location

Lincoln Park

Context

Robert Cavelier de LaSalle (1643-1687) was a French explorer and fur trader who arrived in Quebec in 1666. His expeditions to the Mississippi, whose basin he claimed for France as "Louisiana," followed those of Jolliet and Marquette by nine years. According to one source, Cavelier lived briefly in a permanent structure near Marquette's encampment at the Chicago portage. Cavalier de La Salle was commissioned by Lambert Tree, who is known for building studios for artists arriving in Chicago for the World's Columbian Exposition, also commissioned Cyrus Dallin's "A Signal of Peace," 1890.