George CatlinAmerican, 1796–1872Two Comanche Girls
May one see it?
Unknown
Smithsonian American Art Museum
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
The scene, painted by George Catlin at a Comanche village in 1834, shows “the wigwam of the Chief, his dogs, and his five children.” The artist also described the village as “six or eight hundred skin-covered lodges, made of poles and buffalo skins, in the manner precisely as those of the Sioux and other Missouri tribes . . . This village with its thousands of wild inmates, with horses and dogs, and wild sports and domestic occupations, presents a most curious scene; and the manners and looks of the people, a rich subject for the brush and the pen.” (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 42, 1841, reprint 1973, and 1848 Catalogue, Catlin’s Indian Gallery, SAAM online exhibition)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- 1985.66.53-54
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Image: Smithsonian American Art Museum — CC0
Meanwhile, in the life of George Catlin
The whole life1830–1836
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.
spring 1834
Fort Gibson: portraits of Cherokee, Choctaw, Osage
Leaving New Orleans for Fort Gibson in Indian Territory, he paints portraits of Cherokee, Choctaw, Muscogee, Osage and other Native Americans.
19 June 1834
With the dragoons onto the Southern Plains
He sets out onto the Southern Plains with a dragoon detachment led by Henry Leavenworth and Henry Dodge, and visits Comanche and Wichita lands.
1836
First exhibition: about 500 works
Catlin’s first exhibition takes place in the United States, with about 500 works, but it makes little public stir.
