George Catlin

American painter

• Born: July 26, 1796
• Birthplace: Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
• Died: December 23, 1872
• Place of death: Jersey City, New Jersey

Catlin painted some of the earliest depictions of the culture of the upper Missouri River Valley Indians, and his books include much significant ethnological material about tribal ceremonies.

Early Life

George Catlin was the fifth of fourteen children born to Polly Sutton and Putnam Catlin, and he achieved the most fame. Polly, his mother, had been born on the Pennsylvania frontier and as a child had been captured by the Indians during the 1778 “Wyoming Massacre.” His Connecticut-born father, Putnam Catlin, served as a fife major during the American Revolution. After the war, Putnam studied law, moved to Wilkes-Barre, and married Polly Sutton. The Catlins hoped that young George would become a lawyer also, and in 1817, they sent the twenty-one-year-old back to Connecticut to study.

After Catlin completed his training, in less than two years he returned home with reasonable skills but little enthusiasm for the law. Rather, he wanted to become a portrait painter, and even during court proceedings he sketched scenes and people in the room. Sometime between 1821 and 1823, he quit his law practice and moved to Philadelphia, where he set out on his life’s work. A handsome young man of no more than five feet nine inches, he had a deep scar on his left cheek, black hair, blue eyes, and a medium complexion. He was a friendly, outgoing person who made friends easily and usually kept them for life. These attributes enabled him to penetrate the artistic society in Philadelphia, and by early 1824, he became a member of the Pennsylvania Academy, the literary and artistic group in that city.

Soon Catlin had enough commissions for miniatures and portraits, and financial security seemed at hand, yet he was restless and dissatisfied. A visiting group of Indian leaders who were in the East to negotiate with the government caught his attention. They seemed natural and dignified compared to his city acquaintances, and Catlin decided to paint them and record their customs. Before he could do so, he continued to do portraits and to make friends with wealthy and prominent people to finance his later western travels. While in Albany, New York, working on a portrait of Governor DeWitt Clinton, Catlin met Clara Bartless Gregory, and on May 20, 1828, the two were married. Between portrait assignments, Catlin traveled to nearby reservations to paint Indian leaders, and he did several portraits of the noted Seneca leader Red Jacket. Despite his marriage, his continuing restlessness overcame him, and in early 1830, Catlin set out for St. Louis to begin what was to be his life’s work: painting, observing, and describing the western Indians.

Life’s Work

In St. Louis, Catlin met the famous explorer William Clark, who was then superintendent for Indian affairs for the tribes beyond the Mississippi. Clark knew the western tribes as well as anyone and proved to be very helpful. He answered Catlin’s questions and invited him to paint portraits of the Indians who came to the city to confer with him. During the summer of 1830, Catlin accompanied Clark to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, to observe a treaty council meeting there, and later that same year, they visited Indians encamped along the Kansas River. In late 1830, Catlin traveled to Fort Leavenworth to observe and paint tribes there, while the next spring, he accompanied an Indian agent up the Missouri River to what is now Omaha, to visit other villages. By the end of 1831, the artist had observed, met, and painted Indians from perhaps fifteen distinct tribes, and he had acquired artifacts from many of them in addition to his sketches and portraits.

Still, Catlin wanted to observe villages and tribes that were farther removed from white society. His chance came in March, 1832, when he set off up the Missouri River on the American Fur Company steamboat Yellowstone, traveling upstream to Fort Union, at the mouth of the Yellowstone River in western North Dakota. Catlin worked as rapidly as possible, painting as many as five or six pictures a day. From Fort Union, Catlin and two trappers went back down the Missouri in a small skiff. Along the way, they halted at the Mandan villages in central North Dakota, where Catlin drew detailed pictures of the Mandan Okeepa Ceremony. Five years later, a smallpox epidemic virtually destroyed this tribe; his data, as a result, constitute almost the only information about the ceremony that survived.

Two years later, Catlin accompanied an army expedition west onto the southern plains. Catlin also traveled north to Fort Snelling at what is now Minneapolis-St. Paul to paint villagers there. In 1836, he decided to visit the famous Pipe Stone Quarry in southwestern Minnesota, the site from which the Lakota (Sioux) obtained the red stone that they used for their pipes. Despite the Indians’ efforts to discourage them, Catlin and several companions traveled to the quarry, where he made sketches and gathered samples of the stone. A geologist later named the mineral Catlinite in his honor. By this time, Catlin had executed approximately six hundred paintings and sketches of Indians, as well as collecting artifacts that varied from a Crow tepee to beads and feather headdresses. He had taken copious notes that he would later transcribe and publish along with his drawings.

By 1837, Catlin had moved this collection east, and late that year, he began exhibiting his paintings and artifacts, or Indian Gallery, as he called the collection. The exhibit drew large crowds, and he soon took it to Washington, Philadelphia, and Boston. Catlin, however, proved to be an inept businessperson. He hoped to sell his material to the U.S. government and worked for some years to interest Congress in buying it. When it became apparent that the government had little serious interest in Indian materials, a disappointed Catlin set sail for England. He arrived there in 1839 and again exhibited before large and enthusiastic crowds. In 1841, he published the first of his several books about the Indians. Always short of money, by 1845 he moved to Paris, where he was asked to exhibit the paintings at the Louvre.

Catlin’s years in France were among the most unhappy of his life. On the edge of bankruptcy, and with little chance of getting back to the United States, he became discouraged at the news that Congress voted repeatedly not to buy his paintings. Then, in July, 1845, his wife, Clara, died of pneumonia, and a year later his three-year-old son George died as well. His wife’s family arranged for his three daughters to return to the United States, but Catlin remained mired in debt and unable to leave Paris. In 1852, Joseph Harrison, a wealthy American, bought Catlin’s paintings and took them back to Philadelphia, leaving the artist more or less free from debt. With little more than determination, he began to paint new copies of his original Indian Gallery during the 1850’s. He also made several trips to South America and to the West Coast of North America. In 1870, he returned to the United States and was reunited with his daughters. Catlin died in 1872, believing that his country had spurned his life’s work.

Ironically, had Congress bought the paintings during the 1840’s, they would not have survived the Smithsonian fire. As it was, when Catlin’s exhibit of his cartoon collection failed in New York in 1870, Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian invited the artist to display them in Washington.

Significance

George Catlin stands out as a man with single-minded purpose: to preserve knowledge of the western Indians, their dress and customs, for all Americans. This goal took him west, where he painted Indians from dozens of tribes. As art, his work does not rank as great. He was largely self-taught, and he often painted hurriedly and under crude conditions. When he had time, he used a style similar to that which he had employed as a Philadelphia portrait painter. Often he sketched quickly, focusing on a person’s face and barely sketching in the remainder of the body. Regardless of the style, Catlin’s work is considered among the most accurate and unadorned in depicting Native Americans. Hundreds of his paintings have survived, and he did succeed in preserving knowledge of Indian life.

In addition to his paintings, Catlin kept knowledge of the Indians alive in other ways. As a showman and exhibitor, he exposed thousands of Americans to Indian scenes and artifacts during the mid-nineteenth century. Of more significance, his writings provide valuable ethnological data for knowledge of the tribal societies that he visited. His more significant books include Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians (1841), Catlin’s North American Indian Portfolio (1844), Life Amongst the Indians (1861), and Last Rambles Amongst the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes (1867). In addition to these, Catlin published catalogs of his exhibits and many articles for newspapers in the United States. Throughout his career, he labored to bring knowledge of the Indians to white society. For artists and ethnologists, his legacy is rich.

Bibliography

Catlin, George. Episodes from Life Among the Indians and Last Rambles. Edited by Marvin C. Ross. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1959. Includes selections from Catlin’s first and last books about his experiences with Indians. This well-edited collection includes more than 150 photographs of Catlin’s paintings.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. George Catlin and His Indian Gallery. Edited by George Gurney and Therese Thau Heyman. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2002. Includes 275 reproductions of the Catlin paintings in the Smithsonian’s collection. Also features essays about his life and work.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians. 2 vols. London: D. Bogue, 1841. Reprint. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1973. A clearly reprinted edition of Catlin’s most significant ethnological writing, done only a few years after he left the West.

Dippie, Brian W. Catlin and His Contemporaries: The Politics of Patronage. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990. Examines Catlin’s battle to seek patronage and make a living from his artwork, including his efforts to persuade the U.S. government to purchase his Indian Gallery.

Ewers, John C. Artists of the Old West. New York: Doubleday, 1965. Ewers is probably the most knowledgeable student of Catlin’s contributions to ethnology, and he discusses those in his chapter on Catlin.

Haberly, Loyd. Pursuit of the Horizon: A Life of George Catlin, Painter and Recorder of the American Indian. New York: Macmillan, 1948. A full-length popular biography of Catlin that gives a balanced treatment of his long life, including his years in Europe. It has neither notes nor bibliography but is based on solid research.

Hassrick, Royal B. The George Catlin Book of American Indians. New York: Watson-Guptill, 1977. This volume, featuring both color and black-and-white plates, reproduces a generous selection of Catlin’s paintings. It briefly discusses his life, art, and writings, but its value lies chiefly in the illustrations.

Haverstock, Mary Sayre. Indian Gallery: The Story of George Catlin. New York: Four Winds Press, 1973. This popular biography focuses primarily on Catlin’s pre-1839 activities. The last four decades of his life are compressed into a mere fifty pages.

McCraken, Harold. George Catlin and the Old Frontier. New York: Dial Press, 1959. The result of thorough research, this well-written biography focuses almost entirely on Catlin’s life to 1839; it devotes only two of twenty-two chapters to his career between 1839 and 1872.

Moore, Robert J., Jr. Native Americans, a Portrait: The Art and Travels of Charles Bird King, George Catlin, and Karl Bodmer. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1997. Contains more than one thousand images of artwork by these three Native American artists, including more than three hundred works reproduced in color. Also features an essay by Moore, placing their art within the context of American politics during the 1830’s, when the government was forcibly removing Native Americans from their homelands.

Roehm, Marjorie Catlin. The Letters of George Catlin and His Family: A Chronicle of the American West. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Based on several hundred Catlin family letters used for the first time, this book combines the author’s narrative with extensive selections from family correspondence. Half of the book considers Catlin’s activities after he left the country. The use of family papers gives an immediacy to the story.