George Catlin (1796 – 1872) was an American lawyer, painter, author, and traveler, who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the American frontier.
Catlin was also intrigued by stories told to him by his mother, Polly Sutton, who had been captured by Indians during the 1778 Battle of Wyoming in Pennsylvania.
Following a brief career as a lawyer, he produced two major collections of paintings of American Indians and published a series of books chronicling his travels among the native peoples of North, Central and South America.
Catlin wanted to sell his Indian Gallery to the U.S. government to have his life’s work preserved intact. His continued attempts to persuade various officials in Washington, D.C. to buy the collection failed. In 1852, he was forced to sell the original Indian Gallery, now 607 paintings, due to personal debts.
Catlin spent the last 20 years of his life trying to re-create his collection, and recreated more than 400 paintings.
Catlin felt he could find a more receptive audience in Europe and moved his family to England in November 1839, then to Paris in 1845, and eventually lived in some obscurity in Ostend.
In 1871, after an absence of more than three decades, Catlin returned to the United States.
Source: https://georgecatlin.org
