George CatlinAmerican, 1796–1872Másh-kee-wet, a Great Dandy
Can I see it?
Unknown
Where is “Másh-kee-wet, a Great Dandy” now? Collection: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. Unknown.
Washington, D.C., United States
The owner is known; whether it is on view today is not.
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
About the painting
Before George Catlin began his extensive travels in the West, he spent time in eastern cities, where he often saw visiting delegations of Native Americans and was painted their portraits. Nine members of a Winnebago delegation, including He Who Breaks the Bushes and He Who Moistens the Wood, sat for him in Washington, D.C., in 1828. Three years later, also in the capital, the artist painted Menominee and Seneca delegations, including a portrait of the Menominee Másh-kee-wet, whom the artist called in his 1848 Catalogue, a “great beau, or dandy.” In the late 1820s, Catlin was still a conventional portrait painter who was looking for, as he later wrote, “some branch or enterprise of the art, on which to devote a whole life-time of enthusiasm,” and he found his “enterprise” in the delegations of Indians who came east. He thought them “arrayed and equipped in all their classic beauty . . . exactly for the painter’s palette!” (Catlin, Letters and Notes , vol. 1, no. 1, 1841; reprint 1973)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Details
- Accession number
- 1985.66.223
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Image: Smithsonian American Art Museum — CC0
In the life of George Catlin
The whole life1830
First journey west with Governor Clark
He accompanies William Clark, governor of the Missouri Territory, on a diplomatic mission to Fort Crawford and then up the Mississippi into Native territory.
1830–1836
Five journeys into the American West
St. Louis was his base for the five trips and the steamer Yellowstone of the American Fur Company his first transport; he visited 48 tribes in all (other accounts say about fifty). On trips along the Arkansas, Red and Mississippi rivers, in Florida and around the Great Lakes he painted more than 500 pictures and gathered a substantial collection of artifacts.
1832
Up the Missouri to Fort Union
He ascends the Missouri more than 3,000 km to the Fort Union trading post (today on the North Dakota–Montana border) and spends several weeks among peoples little touched by European culture. Visiting eighteen tribes, among them the Pawnee, Omaha, Ponca, Mandan, Hidatsa, Cheyenne, Crow, Assiniboine and Blackfeet, he paints the most vivid portraits of his career.
March 1833
Prince Maximilian’s expedition sees his work
At Major O’Fallon’s country estate near St. Louis, members of Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied’s scientific and ethnographic expedition look over the works from Catlin’s first Missouri expedition, among them the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, who later painted many Native American portraits and scenes of his own.
winter 1833 – 1834
Winter in Pensacola, then New Orleans
He spends the winter in Pensacola, Florida, and then moves on to New Orleans.
