George Catlin: American Indian Portraits

During the 1830s Pennsylvania-born artist George Catlin (1796–1872) made five trips to the western United States to document the Native American peoples and their way of life. The resulting portraits have become one of the most extensive, evocative and important records of indigenous peoples ever made.

Catlin was also an entrepreneur and a showman and, inspired by his encounters, he created an ‘Indian Gallery’ that toured America and Europe during the next ten years. This exhibition of over fifty portraits was the first time that they had been seen together outside America since returning there in the 1850s. They were displayed to suggest the sense of spectacle created by Catlin and demonstrate how he constructed a particular image of American Indians in the minds of his audience.

Organised in collaboration with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington

America in the 1830s and ‘40s (2:13)

American Indian Portraits (2:51)

Who was Catlin? (2:51)

Artefacts (1:50)

The Mandan Shirt (2:19)

Black Hawk (2:31)

American Identity (1:50)

Contemporary Culture (1:39)

Curator's Biography (2:52)

The Indian Gallery (2:06)

The Ojibwa and lowa in Europe (1:40)

Catlin's Identity in Europe (1:51)

Catlin – the Final Years (1:50)

Gender in Catlin's Portraits (3:07)

Catlins European Adventure (3:32)

Introduction to the Arikara and Blackfoot tribes (4:30)