Born:
1796
Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania

Died:
1872
Jersey City, New Jersey

Biography:
Born in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, George Catlin became the first American artist of stature to visit and depict the Plains Indians on his own volition, and he spent about eight years traveling among the 48 North American Indian tribes. His sketches and paintings are the first and most important record of land west of the Mississippi River before white settlement. Historian Robert Taft wrote that ..."it can be said that Catlin was the great publicist" of the upper Missouri region as a result of his trip in 1832. ..."I find Catlin's name the most frequently mentioned in biographical accounts of later artists of the West or for that matter one of the most frequently referred to authorities on the early history of the upper Missouri country." (38)

Catlin's childhood was in New York and Pennsylvania, and he heard much about Indians as a youngster because his mother at the age of eight had been captured by them. The family also had numerous visitors who had traveled the frontier and whose stories intrigued him. He was educated at home and became a collector of Indian relics.

In 1817, he began the study of law at Litchfield, Connecticut and taught himself to paint portraits, mainly prominent politicians. Until 1823, he practiced as a lawyer in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. But finding art more interesting, he moved to Philadelphia where he was encouraged by his artist friends Rembrandt Peale, Thomas Sully and John Neagle.

He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and then went to New York to the National Academy of Design, where in 1824, he was also elected a Member. In Philadelphia in 1824, he had seen a delegation of Plains Indians, described as "lords of the forest," which aroused his determination to become a pictorial historian of Indians. In the six years before he headed West, he painted portraits of Indians on reservations in western New York.

By 1830, he was in St. Louis, which was the western gateway to the West, and he was aided by General William Clark, Superintendent of Indian Affairs and former leader with Meriweather Lewis of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. He traveled with Clark for two years when he negotiated Indian treaties, and painted Iowa, Missouri, Otoe, Omaha, Sauk and Fox and eastern Sioux Indians.

Catlin traveled the plains region during the summers until 1836 and returned East in the winters to get more money for his ventures. In 1832, he was aboard the American Fur Company's new steamer "Yellowstone," the first steamboat that traveled to Fort Union at the mouth of the Yellowstone River.

This voyage gave Catlin a chance to paint Indians 2000 miles up the Missouri. He worked with thin paint and had great skill at drawing with a brush, which allowed him to complete about six sketches a day. At Fort Union, the final destination, Catlin was given an upper room to use as a studio. There he did the earliest portraits of the Blackfoot and Crow Indians, but he is better known for his portraits of the Mandans whose manners he much admired. These works had particular value when that tribe was nearly exterminated in 1837 by a small pox epidemic. From his upper Missouri travels of 80 days, he completed nearly 200 paintings.

In Europe, he had an extensive tour and exhibition of his work, called "Catlin's Indian Gallery," more than 600 paintings of portraits and sketches of Indian life. This "Gallery" was well received, but in America, interest in his work lagged until after his death. The collection was offered unsuccessfully to Congress to purchase, and eventually was donated to the National Museum.

After 1852, he made over 600 paintings that were copies of his "Indian Gallery" works, and he also added new subject matter from South American Indians. He died in 1872 in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Credit: Peggy and Harold Samuels, "The Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West", Robert Taft, "Artists and Illustrators of the Old West"