Jessica Crabtree » george catlin

This Day in History: September 16

jessica — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:37:15 +0000

September 16, 1785: Birth of American painter Charles Bird King

Charles Bird King (1785-1862) was one of the most important early American painters whose work included the extensive portrayal of Native Americans.

Like his contemporary George Catlin (whose life and career coincided with roughly the same period) he was the son of a Revolutionary War veteran, and had a family history of violent encounters with Native Americans. In King’s case, his father was killed by Indians in Ohio, precipitating the family’s move back east. There King received his first art training, and later moved to London to study art professionally.

Upon returning he established a distinguished clientele that helped to launch a lucrative painting career. From this period, his portraits of notable politicians, statesmen, and other prominents help to seal his reputation as one of early America’s foremost artists.

At this point, the careers of Catlin and King diverge. While Catlin left a professional career to pursue a life of overland expeditions and field research, working in relative obscurity, King took advantage of his standing to create a comfortable life among the social circles of Washington’s elite. It was his Washington studio that hosted most of his Indian subjects, primarily delegates on diplomatic missions to the capitol who agreed to pose for King’s portraits (as in the one below).

Young Omahaw, War Eagle, Little Missouri, and Pawnees, 36 1/8″ x 28″, oil (1821)

McKenney and Hall lithographs

In the early 1820s, then superintendent of Indian trade Thomas Loraine McKenney became interested in developing a government-sponsored archive of Indian portraits. He turned to King as the most likely choice for the commission, with his high profile and conveniently located Washington studio. When McKenney became the first head of the newly-formed Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1824, he used his position to secure funding for the project. The offer ensured King a steady (and lucrative) source of long-term work.

The publication began in 1829 with the first of three volumes of hand-colored lithographs, done mostly by Henry Inman (a student of John Wesley Jarvis). Nearly 20 years and more than 100 portraits later, the final volume was released in 1844 under the title A History of the Indian Tribes of North America. It represented the collective work of King, his assistant George Cooke, Henry Inman, Philadelphia printer Edward Biddle, and other contributing artists. Writer James Hall used McKenney’s office as a direct source of information for the biographical information that accompanied all three volumes.

Ultimately the collection was the single most important archive of Indian portraits created before the advent of the camera, and remained the largest and most significant reference work until Edward Curtis’ photographic project nearly a century later. King’s paintings portrayed nearly all the major players in Indian politics of the day – including the well-known portraits of Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee prophet and brother of Tecumseh; Black Hawk (Sauk & Fox); Major Ridge (Cherokee); Menawa (Creek); Pushmataha (Choctaw); Red Jacket (Seneca); even Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet.

Comparing the printed lithographs to the originals: Above, Seneca chief Red Jacket (1828), and Inman’s print version from 1835. Below, Hayne Hudjihini, “Eagle of Delight,” (1822) an Oto beauty and wife of a visiting chief.

His originals were stored in the National Institute, where they were poorly maintained, and later relocated to the Smithsonian. But, in a final strange coincidence, the same fate befell them as George Catlin’s collection. All but a few of King’s original paintings were lost after much of the museum’s gallery was destroyed in a fire in 1865, leaving the printed copies of the McKenney & Hall volumes the only remaining record of his extensive work.

The surviving paintings, several of which hang in the White House, give us a glimpse of the lost archive’s scope and splendor.

More info:

McKenney and Hall Lithograph Collection – browse the University of Cincinnati digital library >

American Libraries – Full text of McKenney and Hall’s “History of the Indian Tribes of North America” (Read online as an e-book, PDF, or Kindle)

This Day in History: July 26

jessica — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 14:55:09 +0000

July 26, 1796: Birth of painter George Catlin

George Catlin was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, into the large family of a Revolutionary War veteran. His mother’s and grandmother’s accounts of their experiences as Indian captives may have sparked his early fascination with Native Americans that later became a lifelong passion. As a young man he abandoned a law career to accompany expeditions researching and documenting indigenous peoples throughout North and South America.

During the 1830s, he traveled extensively through the Midwest and the Great Plains, where he spent weeks and months at a time among the Indian nations of the Mississippi and Missouri river valleys – becoming one of the first Europeans to do so. The notes and drawings he compiled during this tour formed the basis of his collection of documentary paintings, which he later published in a two-volume work entitled Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians. He amassed a huge collection of artifacts and kept a detailed record of the customs and appearances of the Native American peoples he encountered. His total output consisted of more than 600 original paintings and over 700 drawings and sketches, making him one of the premier painters of Native Americana.

Catlin attempted unsuccessfully to sell his portfolio to the United States government as a public historical exhibit; eventually he sold his original works to a private collector. He spent much of his later career traveling, writing memoirs, and marketing his work in European tours. He died in New Jersey in 1872; his works were later donated to the Smithsonian Museum.

About His Work

George Catlin is certainly not a painter who became famous solely on account of his artistic skills. In technical terms, his works range from mediocre to downright primitive, as some critics have labeled it. What drove his career was an almost obsessive desire to portray Native Americans from across the continent in the most original setting possible.

Like Edward Curtis, he felt compelled to portray the appearance and customs of peoples whom he felt were a “vanishing race.” In some cases, this proved to be fateful; for example, his extensive work among the Mandan barely preceded a smallpox epidemic that reduced their number to a mere handful. As a result, Catlin’s depictions of the Mandan are valuable today because no artist after him was able to produce such a successful pictorial record of them.

Above: The White Cloud, Head Chief of the Iowas; Below: Mandan Buffalo Dance

There is much controversy over the duplicity in Catlin’s portrayals of Indians. On one hand, his genuine appreciation of Native Americans fueled his eagerness to preserve their cultural record; on the other, he stooped to using white models in Indian apparel for some paintings, and staging performing acts similar to later wild west shows as part of his marketing scheme. Both of these contributed to spreading and reinforcing damaging stereotypes that are still prevalent today.

Right: Sha-kó-ka (“Mint”), a Mandan girl (1832)

The fact remains that his personal mentality in regards to American Indians was far ahead of his time. Whatever his motives in promoting his own work, and his means for marketing it, his profound respect for the cultures he encountered was remarkable, and would have still been uncommon a generation or more ahead of his time.

His confidence in the character of Indian society as a whole was boundless. “The very use of the word savage, as it is applied in its general sense, I am inclined to believe is an abuse of the word, and the people to whom it is applied,” Catlin asserted. Towards the end of his career, he remarked, “No Indian ever betrayed me, struck me with a blow, or stole from me a shilling’s worth of my property.” And this at a time when Indians were still perceived largely as inferior humans predisposed toward aggression and brutality.

Right: Stu-mick-o-súcks, Head Chief of the Blood tribe (Blackfoot)

At its best, it could be said that Catlin’s work helped to graduate the public perception of Native Americans from bloodthirsty savages to that of a more noble race that deserved to be saved from oblivion. It was this perspective that persisted through the end of Catlin’s century – through the climax of the removals, the Indian Wars, and the boarding school era – and into the 20th century, when Native American identity began to re-assert itself in a newer and more permanent context.

Smithsonian Magazine: Catlin’s Obsession by Bruce Watson – a highly recommended biography and assessment

George Catlin: The Complete Works – online gallery