American artist George Catlin (1796–1872) journeyed west five times in the 1830s, traversing the Great Plains where he visited and painted more than 140 American Indian tribes.
The exhibition “George Catlin’s American Buffalo” presents 40 original Catlin paintings from the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s collection to show the crucial role of the buffalo in Plains Indian culture. The museum holds the nearly complete surviving set of Catlin’s first Indian Gallery—more than 500 works—painted from life in the 1830s. The exhibition is organized by the museum in collaboration with the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Adam Duncan Harris, the Petersen Curator of Art and Research at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, is the guest curator.
The exhibition debuts May 10 at the National Museum of Wildlife Art and will remain on display through Aug. 25. It then travels to the Palm Springs Art Museum in Palm Springs, Calif. (Oct. 1 – Dec. 29), the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Mont. (May 31, 2014 – Sept. 14, 2014), the Mennello Museum of American Art in Orlando, Fla. (Oct. 4, 2014 – Jan. 1, 2015) and the Reynolda House Museum of American Art in Winston Salem, N.C. (Feb. 12, 2015 – May 3, 2015).
Catlin, a lawyer turned painter, decided in the 1820s that he would make it his life’s work to record the life and culture of American Indians living on the Great Plains. In 1832, he made an epic journey that stretched over 2,000 miles along the upper Missouri River. St. Louis became Catlin’s base of operations for the five trips he took between 1830 and 1836. Catlin traveled the frontier, painting landscapes and portraits of native tribes to document their lives and customs. He produced hundreds of canvases, which he called his Indian Gallery. Ambitious in scope, and filled with color and closely observed detail, the Indian Gallery remains one of the wonders of the 19th century. Catlin’s dream was to sell his Indian Gallery to the U.S. government so that his life’s work would be preserved intact. After several failed attempts to persuade various officials, he toured with it in Europe in the 1840s. He was forced to sell the original Indian Gallery due to personal debts in 1852. Catlin then spent the last 20 years of his life trying to re-create his collection.
In 1872, Catlin came to Washington, D.C., at the invitation of Joseph Henry, the first secretary of the Smithsonian. Until his death later that year, Catlin worked in a studio in the Smithsonian’s “Castle.” A Philadelphia collector’s widow donated the original Indian Gallery—more than 500 works—to the Smithsonian in 1879.
Smithsonian information: (202) 633-1000. Website: americanart.si.edu.