early career as a lawyer
self-taught
1830 – joins General William Clark’s mission up the Mississippi River to record the appearance and culture of Native Americans; travels down the Missouri, Arkansas and Red Rivers throughout the 1830s
1837 – assembles portraits of Native Americans, along with costumes and artifacts to form his “Indian Gallery”; Indian Gallery tours US until 1840
1840 – Catlin unsuccessfully petitions the US Congress to buy Gallery; European tour of Indian Gallery begins in London
1841 – publishes Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians
1854 – travels to South America to create ethnographic portraits
1870 –group of paintings known as the “Cartoon Collection” exhibited in Brussels
1871 – “Cartoon Collection” exhibited in New York; Caitlin invitation to install Collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, although the US government did not acquire the “Cartoon Collection” until 1965
American frontier (1830s); London and Paris (1840); South America (1854)
The Last Race, Part of Okipa Ceremony (Mandan), 1832 (Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC)
Catlin, George. George Catlin and his Indian Gallery. Exhibition catalogue. New York: W.W. Norton, 2002
Hausdoerffer, John. Catlin’s Lament: Indians, Manifest Destiny, and the Ethics of Nature. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2009
McCracken, Harold. George Catlin and the Old Frontier. New York: Dial Press, 1959
Roehm, Marjorie Catlin. The Letters Notes of George Catlin and his Family; a Chronicle of the American West. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966