George O. Catlin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Catlin

George Catlin (July 26, 1796 – December 23, 1872) was an American painter, author and traveler who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the Old West.

The nearly complete surviving set of Catlin’s first Indian Gallery painted in the 1830s is now part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection. Some 700 sketches are in the American Museum of Natural History, New York City.

Biography

Catlin was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. As a child growing up in Pennsylvania, Catlin spent many hours hunting, fishing, and looking for American Indian artifacts. His fascination with Native Americans was kindled by his mother, who told him stories of the Western Frontier and how she was captured by a tribe when she was a young girl. Years later, a group of Native Americans came through Philadelphia dressed in their colorful costumes and made quite an impression on Catlin. Following a brief career as a lawyer, he produced two major collections of paintings of American Indians and published a series of books chronicling his travels among the native peoples of North, Central and South America. Claiming his interest in America’s 'vanishing race' was sparked by a visiting American Indian delegation in Philadelphia, he set out to record the appearance and customs of America’s native people.

Catlin began his journey in 1830 when he accompanied General William Clark on a diplomatic mission up the Mississippi River into Native American territory. St. Louis became Catlin’s base of operations for five trips he took between 1830 and 1836, eventually visiting fifty tribes. Two years later he ascended the Missouri River over 3000 km to Fort Union, where he spent several weeks among indigenous people still relatively untouched by European civilization. He visited eighteen tribes, including the Pawnee, Omaha, and Ponca in the south and the Mandan, Hidatsa, Cheyenne, Crow, Assiniboine, and Blackfeet to the north. There, at the edge of the frontier, he produced the most vivid and penetrating portraits of his career. Later trips along the Arkansas, Red and Mississippi rivers as well as visits to Florida and the Great Lakes resulted in over 500 paintings and a substantial collection of artifacts.

When Catlin returned east in 1838, he assembled these paintings and numerous artifacts into his Indian Gallery and began delivering public lectures which drew on his personal recollections of life among the American Indians. Catlin traveled with his Indian Gallery to major cities such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and New York. He hung his paintings “salon style”—side by side and one above another—to great effect. Visitors identified each painting by the number on the frame as listed in Catlin’s catalogue. Soon afterwards he began a lifelong effort to sell his collection to the U.S. government. The touring Indian Gallery did not attract the paying public Catlin needed to stay financially sound, and [Congress] rejected his initial petition to purchase the works, so in 1839 Catlin took his collection across the Atlantic for a tour of European capitals.

Catlin the showman and entrepreneur initially attracted crowds to his Indian Gallery in London, Brussels, and Paris. The French critic Charles Baudelaire remarked on Catlin’s paintings, “M. Catlin has captured the proud, free character and noble expression of these splendid fellows in a masterly way.”

Catlin’s dream was to sell his Indian Gallery to the U.S. government so that his life’s work would be preserved intact. His continued attempts to persuade various officials in Washington, D.C. failed. He was forced to sell the original Indian Gallery, now 607 paintings, due to personal debts in 1852. Industrialist Joseph Harrison took possession of the paintings and artifacts, which he stored in a factory in Philadelphia, as security. Catlin spent the last 20 years of his life trying to re-create his collection. This second collection of paintings is known as the "Cartoon Collection" since the works are based on the outlines he drew of the works from the 1830s.

In 1841 Catlin published Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, in two volumes, with about 300 engravings. Three years later he published 25 plates, entitled Catlin’s North American Indian Portfolio, and, in 1848, Eight Years’ Travels and Residence in Europe. From 1852 to 1857 he traveled through South and Central America and later returned for further exploration in the Far West. The record of these later years is contained in Last Rambles amongst the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes (1868) and My Life among the Indians (ed. by N. G. Humphreys, 1909). In 1872, Catlin traveled to Washington, D.C. at the invitation of Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian. Until his death later that year in Jersey City, New Jersey, Catlin worked in a studio in the Smithsonian “Castle.” Harrison’s widow donated the original Indian Gallery—more than 500 works—to the Smithsonian in 1879.

The nearly complete surviving set of Catlin’s first Indian Gallery painted in the 1830s is now part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection. Some 700 sketches are in the American Museum of Natural History, New York City.

The accuracy of some of Catlin's observations has been questioned. He claimed to be the first white man to see the Minnesota pipestone quarries, and pipestone was named catlinite. Catlin exaggerated various features of the site, and his boastful account of his visit aroused his critics, who disputed his claim of being the first white man to investigate the quarry. Previous recorded white visitors include the Groselliers and Radisson, Father Louis Hennepin, Baron LaHonton and others. Lewis and Clark noted the pipestone quarry in their journals in 1805. Fur trader Philander Prescott had written another account of the area in 1831.

Family

Many historians and descendants believe George Catlin had two families; his acknowledged family on the east coast of the United States, but also a family farther west, started with a Native American woman.

Two other artists of the Old West related to George Catlin by family bloodlines are Frederic Remington and Earl W. Bascom.

Fiction

Larry McMurtry includes Catlin as a character in his The Berrybender Narratives series of novels. In the historical novel The Children of First Man, James Alexander Thom recreates the time Catlin spent with the Mandan people. The 1970 film A Man Called Horse cites Catlin's work as one of the sources for its depiction of Lakota Sioux culture.

Sources

Blizzard, Gladys S. (1996). Come Look with Me: World of Play. Lickle Publishing. ISBN 1-56566-031-5. Vaughn, William (2000). Encyclopedia of Artists. Oxford University Press, Inc. ISBN 0-19-521572-9. Brian Dippe, Christopher Mulvey, Joan Carpenter Troccoli, Therese Thau Heyman (2002). George Catlin and His Indian Gallery. Smithsonian American Art Museum and W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-05217-6. Steven Conn (2004). History's Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-11494-5.

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Artist. He is best remembered for his portraits of Native Americans in the Old West and is the first person to visually record Plains Indians in their native territory. He grew up in Pennsylvania and spent many hours hunting, fishing, and looking for American Indian artifacts. His fascination with Native Americans was kindled by his mother, who told him stories of the western frontier and how she was captured by a tribe when she was a young girl. His early work included engravings drawn from nature of sites along the route of the Erie Canal in New York State. Following a brief career as a lawyer, he produced two major collections of paintings of Native Americans and published a series of books chronicling his travels among the native peoples of North, Central and South America. Spurred by relics brought back by the famous Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804 to 1806 which were owned by his friend, Charles Willson Peale, and claiming his interest in America's 'vanishing race' that was sparked by a visiting American Indian delegation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he set out to record the appearance and customs of America's native peoples. He began his journey in 1830 when he accompanied famed explorer William Clark on a diplomatic mission up the Mississippi River into Native American territory. St. Louis, Missouri became his base of operations for five trips he took between 1830 and 1836, eventually visiting fifty tribes. Two years later he ascended the Missouri River to the Fort Union Trading Post, near what is now the North Dakota/Montana border, where he spent several weeks among indigenous people who were still relatively untouched by European civilization. He visited eighteen tribes, including the Pawnee, Omaha, and Ponca in the south and the Mandan, Hidatsa, Cheyenne, Crow, Assiniboine, and Blackfeet to the north, and there, he produced the most vivid and penetrating portraits of his career. During later trips along the Arkansas, Red and Mississippi rivers, as well as visits to Florida and the Great Lakes, he produced more than 500 paintings and gathered a substantial collection of artifacts. In 1838 he returned east and assembled the paintings and numerous artifacts into his Indian Gallery, and began delivering public lectures which drew on his good personal recollections of life among the Native Americans. He traveled with his Gallery to major cities such as Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Cincinnati, Ohio, and New York City, New York. Soon afterward he began a lifelong effort to sell his collection to the US government. The touring Gallery did not attract the paying public he needed to stay financially sound, and the Congress rejected his initial petition to purchase the works. In 1839 he took his collection across the Atlantic for a tour of European capitals. As a showman and entrepreneur, he initially attracted crowds to his Gallery in London, England, Brussels, Belgium and Paris, France. His continued attempts to persuade various officials in Washington DC to buy the collection failed. In 1852 he was forced to sell the original Gallery, now 607 paintings, due to personal debts. The industrialist Joseph Harrison acquired the paintings and artifacts, which he stored in a factory in Philadelphia, as security. In 1841 he published "Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians," in two volumes, with about 300 engravings. Three years later he published 25 plates, entitled "Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio" and in 1848, "Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe." He spent the last 20 years of his life trying to re-create his Gallery collection, and recreated over 400 paintings. This second collection of paintings is known as the "Cartoon Collection," since the works are based on the outlines he drew of the works from the 1830s. From 1852 to 1857 he traveled through South and Central America and later returned for further exploration in the Far West. The record of these later years is contained in "Last Rambles amongst the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes" (1868) and "My Life among the Indians" (edited by N. G. Humphreys, 1909). In 1872 he traveled to Washington DC at the invitation of Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Until his death in December of that year at the age of 76, he worked in a studio in the Smithsonian "Castle." In 1879 Joseph Harrison's widow donated the original Indian Gallery, more than 500 works, along with related artifacts, to the Smithsonian and the nearly complete surviving set of his first Gallery, painted in the 1830s, is now part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection. His associated artifacts are in the collections of the Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, at the Smithsonian. About 700 sketches are held by the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Other artifacts of his are in the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology collections. The Huntington Library in San Marino, California also holds 239 of his illustrations of both North and South American Indians, as well as his illustrative and manuscript material. Noted author Larry McMurtry includes him as a character in his "The Berrybender Narratives" series of novels (2002 to 2004). In the historical novel "The Children of First Man" (1995), James Alexander Thom recreates the time he spent with the Mandan people. The 1970 film "A Man Called Horse" cites his work as one of the sources for its depiction of Lakota Sioux culture.* Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Feb 24 2020, 16:59:14 UTC

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George Catlin, painter and chronicler of American Indians, son of Putnam and Polly (Sutton) Catlin, was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on July 26, 1796. He grew up on farms in the Susquehanna valley of New York and Pennsylvania, where he hunted, fished, and absorbed local stories about Indians, including an account of the Wyoming (Pennsylvania) massacre of 1778, during which Indians briefly detained his mother and grandmother. At his father's behest, Catlin entered the prestigious law school of Tapping Reeve and James Gould at Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1817 and passed the bars for Connecticut and Pennsylvania the following year. In 1821 he abandoned his legal practice and moved to Philadelphia to pursue a career as an artist. He exhibited as a miniaturist from 1821 to 1823 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, which elected him a member the next year. His miniature of Sam Houston from this period is unparalleled. Catlin turned to portraiture, exhibited for two more years in Philadelphia before moving to New York City, and produced a fine portrait of Stephen F. Austin. While in Albany to execute his first major commission, a full-length portrait of Governor De Witt Clinton, Catlin met Clara B. Gregory, whom he married on May 10, 1828. In the summer of 1828 Catlin received the inspiration that guided him for the rest of his life when he witnessed the visit to Philadelphia by a delegation of "noble and dignified-looking Indians, from the wilds of the 'Far West.'" He promptly decided to devote his life to painting Indians to lend "a hand to a dying nation, who have no historian or biographer of their own," thereby "snatching from a hasty oblivion what could be saved for the benefit of posterity." He spent 1829–30 painting portraits of the delegates to the Virginia Constitutional Convention while awaiting an opportunity to pursue the consuming passion to paint all of the Indian tribes in the United States.

From 1830 to 1836 Catlin traveled and painted Indians of the West much of each spring, summer, and fall. After spending part of two years painting subjects immediately accessible from St. Louis, he boarded the steamer Yellow Stone in 1832 for its maiden voyage to Fort Union, which stood at the confluence of the Yellowstone and upper Missouri rivers. Catlin painted furiously during the five months up river. He outlined about 170 paintings, including the only eyewitness accounts of the exotic Okeepa ceremony of the Mandans, which he completed during the winters spent with Clara. He accompanied a contingent of dragoons from Fort Gibson, Arkansas Territory, in 1834 on their expedition to consult with the elusive Comanche and Pawnee tribes. The expedition, on which more than 200 men died from disease, was the source for several paintings depicting "Texas" as well as the basis for Catlin's later claims of prolonged experience traversing Texas. But Catlin never crossed the international boundary between Indian Territory and Texas, the Red River. His final major expedition took him in 1836 to the sacred Indian pipestone quarry in the southwest corner of what is now Minnesota. He saw himself as the first White man to record that "classic ground." From his "mission" as historian of the Indians, Catlin collected the "North American Indian Gallery," which eventually contained more than 600 paintings and thousands of costumes and cultural artifacts. The portraits, landscapes, and cultural events he painted continue to be invaluable historical and anthropological documents, as well as intriguing artistic accomplishments.

Catlin exhibited his Indian Gallery in major cities along the Ohio River and the East Coast from 1837 to 1839. To reap larger returns from exhibiting and enhance the value of the gallery and his own prestige and thus improve the chances for purchase by the federal government, an almost constant aim for him for the next dozen years, Catlin sailed for England, where for five years he circulated his gallery. In London he published his great work, the two-volume Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indian (1841), which not only championed the Indian but indicted frontier "civilization." Faced with declining interest in his gallery, which now included Indian performers, he moved to the continent, where he again found royal audiences, this time in Paris and Brussels, and diminishing general interest. During the three years on the continent, Catlin suffered the sudden deaths of Clara and their only son, George, Jr. In the wake of the 1848 revolution, which deposed his presumed patron, Louis Philippe, Catlin and his three daughters returned to London. Insolvent, despondent, virtually ignored by the British, yet obsessed with keeping his gallery intact after eighteen years and devoted to making and promoting regardless of the substantial emotional and financial price, Catlin turned to itinerant lecturing to support his family and resuscitate interest. Displaying a few paintings and artifacts, he utilized a new hook for his old subject: his knowledge of that amorphous Eden, the American West, for the thousands of potential British emigrants. Soon, his paintings became mere travel posters, and he became a spokesman for British companies representing large Texas land speculators, principally James B. Reily. His unremunerated task was to encourage organized emigration activity and to direct it to Reily's lands. To supplement his emigration lectures, he published in November 1848 a persuasive pamphlet, Notes for the Emigrant to America, which concluded, "I fearlessly and unhesitatingly pronounce the new State of Texas the finest and fairest field for [emigrants'] consideration." Catlin's efforts on behalf of Texas landowners persuaded one Midlands emigration group in 1849 to engage Edward Smith and John Barrow to "examine the Country pointed out by Mr. Catlin," and report their findings. Catlin's employers, holders of the large tracts of James Reily, took in the Midlands group shortly after the return, and glowing report, of Smith and Barrow. The speculation group changed names twice in a year, finally settling on the United States Land Company in early 1850.

Newspapers from Galveston to Austin cited Catlin in connection with impending settlement in Central Texas, not just as organizer abroad but as leader of the party as well. In June 1850 the Universal Emigration and Colonization Company, with a house newspaper, the Universal Emigration and Colonization Messenger, and agreements with the Black Star Line for transporting emigrants, absorbed the United States Land Company. For his investment in time, money, and energy, Catlin became the "local superintendent in Texas" for the newly consolidated company. The August issue of the Messenger included an article on the proposed "New Colony of Milam County, Texas"-on 60,000 acres of Reily's tract now in Coryell County-that discussed the "class of persons who are now accompanying Mr. Catlin to his first settlement in Texas." The report of Catlin's departure for Texas was premature, however, and in fact a few days later he severed relations with the company in a disagreement concerning compensation. He received no money for his two years' recruiting nor for his investment.

Catlin's efforts as Texas colonization expert proved disastrous for himself and the colonists. He mortgaged his gallery to invest in the Texas scheme and to meet expenses during two years spent promoting it and continued to borrow against it to mollify initial creditors and support his family. In 1852 creditors seized the gallery and sold it to industrialist Joseph Harrison, who immediately shipped it to a warehouse in Philadelphia. A sometime benefactor wrote Catlin years later that "I remember I constantly warned you of the imprudent manner in which you were acting, wasting your money upon Texas gamblings." The colonists received dangerously inaccurate and misleading information concerning the intended destination, Central Texas, that reflected Catlin's ignorance of the area, his financial desperation, the interests of the land speculators, and the complete incompetence of the colonization company. Though the British colonists founded the Colony of Kent in what is now Bosque County, their ordeal in Catlin's Eden ended shortly afterward, with high casualty rates.

Catlin saw "the second starting point of my life" in an expedition to South America in 1852 and within five years claimed to have traversed the Western Hemisphere from Kamchatka to Tierra del Fuego, including a trip down the entire Rio Grande. He produced hundreds of paintings depicting North and South American Indian life, which he called the Catlin Cartoon Collection. His return to the United States in 1871 reunited him with his daughters, whom Clara's brother had taken during the days of the gallery seizure. He died in Jersey City on December 23, 1872, and was eventually interred in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York. Mrs. Joseph Harrison donated the gallery, which Catlin had not seen since 1852, to the Smithsonian Institution in 1879, where it remains today. Catlin's published works include, in addition to those mentioned, Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio: Hunting, Rocky Mountains, and Prairies of America (1845); Catlin's Notes on Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe (2 vols., 1848); Life Among the Indians (1867); and Last Rambles amongst the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes (1867).