George Catlin, 1796-1872

The purpose of this guide is to give a brief history of George Catlin , his travels, paintings and prints of Native Americans.

George Catlin created paintings of the American Indian in a series of paintings over the course of numerous trips during the 1830s.  He recreated many of those paintings in outline lithographs.  These beautiful works have come to us through a series drawn on stone by McGahey after George Catlin and published by Day & Haghe , London, 1844.  A few of these were hand-colored and command prices in the thousands of dollars.  A number of the prints not colored are offered by dealers for less than a thousand dollars for the majority.



Louis Haghe (1806-1885) was a talented lithographer and watercolour artist. Together with William Day, (1797 - 1845) he formed Day & Haghe which was the most famous early Victorian firm of lithographic printing in London in 1829.
Day and Haghe printed lithographs dealing with a wide range of subjects, such as hunting scenes, topographical views and genre depictions.
In 1838, Day and Haghe were appointed 'Lithographers to the Queen'. After William's death in 1845, the firm became known as 'Day & Son '. They were pioneers in developing the medium of the lithograph printed in colors.


The English lithographic artist John McGahey (b. 1817) drew Catlin's images on stone and wood.

George Catlin, a brief timeline and history of the painter of Native Americans.

1796:  Born in Wilkes-Barre , Pennsylvania (Wyoming, Pennsylvania according to his obituary in The New York Times, December 24, 1872).  George Catlin was educated as a lawyer, he later became a portrait painter in New York and Philadelphia.

1824:  He gained membership in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts , but his career in formal portraiture met with little success even though he earned commissions to paint the leading figures of the day, including Sam Houston and Dolley Madison, but struggled to find a larger purpose to his work.  “My mind was continually reaching for some branch or enterprise of the art, on which to devote a whole lifetime of enthusiasm,” he wrote in his memoirs.  His portrait of Governor DeWitt Clinton hangs in New York’s City Hall.

1828:  Painted portraits of a delegation of the Winnebago tribe that was touring the East Coast.  He also exhibited 12 of his paintings at the American Academy of Fine Arts.

1830:  In 1830 he went out to St. Louis where he met the aging William Clark, who was then U.S. superintendent of Indian Affairs. Clark not only gave him advice but escorted him four hundred miles up the Mississippi River so Catlin could paint the chiefs of several nations who had assembled for a council at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.   From there he traveled extensively for several years to Indian villages along the Platte and Missouri rivers and then later to tribes throughout the mid and far west.  Over the next 9 years, Catlin traveled 1,800 miles up the Missouri River, traveling by steamboat, horseback and canoe, visited the southern plains and Great Lakes region, and 48 Native American nations in hopes "of reaching ultimately, every tribe of Indians on the Continent of North America, and of bringing home faithful portraits of their principal personages, ... views of their villages, games, and full notes on their character and history." The result was more than 300 portraits and 200 scenes of everyday Indian life and one of the most significant chronicles of Indian life and culture ever produced. His travels to the homelands of Native Americans coincided with their movement to reservations, as mandated by the Indian Removal Act of 1830 (which forced Southeastern tribes to move to what is now Oklahoma along the disastrous “Trail of Tears”), making his works among the final documentation of many tribes in their native lands.  His images of the Mandan people, who became extinct from smallpox shortly after his portraits, would give value to his life’s work.
Although Catlin was not the first painter to paint Native Americans, he was the first to picture them so extensively in their own territories and one of the few to portray them as fellow human beings rather than savages. His more realistic approach grew out of his appreciation for a people who, he wrote, “had been invaded, their morals corrupted, their lands wrested from them, their customs changed, and therefore lost to the world.”

1837:  To heighten public awareness of these endangered cultures and to help underwrite his expenses, he created Catlin's Indian Gallery of Portraits, Landscapes, Manners and Customs, Costumes, etc., which contained the paintings along with artifacts collected during his travels. Fascinated New Yorkers paid fifty cents each and thronged his galleries for weeks.
Many doubted the veracity of Catlin's stories and depictions. When he discovered that having Native Americans present at his exhibition increased attendance, he capitalized on his observation by inviting his acquaintance Running Fox and 20 of his tribe, who were visiting New York City, to the exhibition. He publicized their appearance and doubled admission price to $1.
The Gallery toured Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston for a year, and then moved to Europe for an extended tour.  Catlin had hoped to make his fortune, but though they were popular, these exhibitions were a financial failure. The challenge of keeping his collection together and making ends meet led him to questionable strategies. He courted audiences by presenting real Indians enacting war dances. In effect, Catlin created the first Wild West show, with all its compromising sensationalism and exploitation.

1840s:  During the 1840s, when he toured his Indian Gallery in Europe, Catlin executed a series of outline copies of the works included in the Gallery as a precaution against loss of the collection.

1841:  Between 1841 and 1842, at his own expense, Catlin wrote and published his two volume set Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians. He also wrote numerous petitions and "memorials" to Congress, often including statements from national and international reputable supporters, such as Daniel Webster, General Lewis Cass, the Joint Committee on the Library (of Congress), and the American Ambassador to France. The Smithsonian Institution's first Secretary Joseph Henry strongly supported congressional acquisition of Catlin's work and even provided Catlin with a small studio in the Castle building.

1842:  The Gallery opened in London to rave reviews and received accolades from Queen Victoria.  The expense of shipping himself, his entourage, and his enormous collection—which weighed eight tons and included two live bears—kept him perpetually in debt.

1844:  In an attempt to expand his market, Catlin had a number of his paintings made into prints, issuing them in 1844 as Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio.  This is a large folio volume containing twenty pages of text and twenty-five lithographic reproductions of Catlin’s paintings. Catlin intended it to be the first of a series, but only this one volume was produced.  Some of these were hand colored and few of any survive today whether colored or not.  An American edition was issued the next year in New York by James Ackerman, and its lithographic stones were used about twenty years later for an edition by the famous firm of Currier and Ives.

1845:  The Gallery opened in Paris to rave reviews and received accolades from King Louis-Phillipe.  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.”  While Catlin was exhibiting in Paris, his wife, Clara, died of pneumonia, and the next year, his two-year-old son died of typhoid fever. That same year, some of his Ojibwa performers contracted smallpox; two of them died.

1848:  A Descriptive Catalog of Catlin's Indian Collection, containing Portraits, Landscapes, Costumes, &c., and Representations of the Manners and Customs of the North American Indians. Collected and Painted entirely by Mr. Catlin, Durin Eight Years' Travel Amongst Forty-Eight Tribes, Mostly Speaking Different Languages.  Also Opinions of the Press in England, France, and the United States. London: published by the author, At his Indian Collection, No. 6, Waterloo Place. 1848.

1849:  Catlin sat for his own portrait in 1849, by his contemporary William Fisk. It resides in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery.

1852:  The political upheavals of 1848 and diminishing attendance brought Catlin to bankruptcy in 1852, when he sent his daughters to live with relatives in the United States. He didn't see them again until 1870.  Catlin was thrown into a London debtors’ prison.  Only the purchase of all his original paintings—except some he hid—by Philadelphia industrialist Joseph Harrison freed him from his creditors’ demands.  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.

1853:  In 1853 Catlin began another series of journeys, this time to South America and along the West Coast of the United States. He followed these travels, which took place over approximately seven years, with a decade of painting in his studio. During this period, he created the Cartoon Collection, which was comprised of scenes from his South American and West Coast travels, as well as duplicates of works from the Indian Gallery.

1860s:  During the 1860s, Catlin, with some assistance from his brother Francis, began to reproduce the original paintings, basing them on the cartoons. This second series of paintings also contained works chronicling his later journeys to the American west coast and to South America.

1870:  On his return to the United States he found that his work had been largely forgotten.  He made the prophetic statement: "I have devoted fourteen years of my life, and all my earthly means, in visiting these scattered and remote people, and with my toils and privations, I have had my enjoyments...My works are done, and as well as I could do them under the circumstances. I have quoted no one; but have painted and written the things that I saw and heard, and of nothing else. My works will probably be published in full (too late for my benefit), but for the benefit and instruction of others who come behind me." (Last Rambles, p. 357)

1871:  From 1871 until his death the following year, Catlin exhibited this collection in New York and at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.  Catlin lobbied the U.S. government for patronage throughout his career, hoping Congress would purchase the Indian Gallery as a legacy for future generations.  He offered his American Indian Gallery as an “artistic and historical treasure” to the federal government on several occasions for as little as $65,000. Each time, Congress refused the offer.

1872:  All of the appeals to the government for the purchase of the collection were, in the end, unsuccessful and Catlin died almost penniless and still anxious about the fate of his collection..  Like the Indians he loved and whose life he shared for almost a decade, Catlin “nurtured . . . a burning sense of injury and injustice” thanks to what he sarcastically termed “the glorious influences of refined and moral cultivation.”

1879:  Mrs. Joseph Harrison, who had warehoused them a quarter century before, donated 450 original paintings of Catlin’s work to the Smithsonian, There, combined with Catlin’s own donation, they comprised the Indian gallery of which Catlin had dreamed.  His later copies were sold by his daughters to collector Paul Mellon, who gave the bulk of them to the National Gallery of Art.

1947:  A historical marker was installed at River and South Sts., Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.  "The great painter of Indian portraits was born here July 26, 1796, of Connecticut ancestry. Until 1823 he practiced law here and nearby. He began painting Indian pictures six years later."

1983:  Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio: A Library of Congress/Abbeville Press Facsimile Leatherbound Editon containing 31 plates is published - still in print and available for $2,000.00.

Online References

American Art - George Catlin and His Indian Gallery
American Journeys - Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio
Arizona State University - Labriola National American Indian Data Center University Libraries - History Students - Be Aware!
CitizensVoice.com - George Catlin: Painting the American Indian Frontier for Posterity by William C. Kashatus
ExplorePAhistory.com - Historical Markers - George Catlin
Internet Archive - American Libraries - pdf file: A descriptive catalogue of Catlin's Indian collection, containing portraits, landscapes, costumes, &c., and representations of the manners and customs of the North American Indians (1848) - Note: this is a 13MB file.
National Museum - The Catlin Indian Collections
Native American Traditions - Online Exhibition - George Catlin Exhibition
Philadelphia Print Shop, The - Prints by George Catlin - From North American Indian Portfolio
Smithsonian American Art Museum - Search for "George Catlin" yielding 623 citations
Smithsonian Archives of American Art - A Finding Aid to the George Caitlin Papers, 1821-1904, 1946, in the Archives of American Art
Smithsonian Archives of American Art - Collections Online: George Catlin (digitized from microfilm)
Smithsonian.com - George Catlin's Obsession
Smithsonian.com - Portraits on the Plains
University of Virginia Library - George Catlin Indian Paintings Collection from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts - George Catlin The Medicine Painter 1796-1872 - Native American Indian and Western Expansion of the United States
Voice of America - George Catlin Painted Native American Tribes and Their Cultures During the 1830s
Wikipedia - George Catlin - Louis Haghe

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