George Catlin
George Catlin (born July 26, 1796 in Wilkes-Barre , Pennsylvania , † December 23, 1872 in Jersey City , New Jersey ) was an American painter , author and Indian expert . Most of his work is on display at the Catlin Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum , Washington, DC . About 700 drawings are in the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Live and act
childhood and education
George Catlin was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the fifth of 14 children. Even in Catlin's childhood, Indians had a strong influence on him, as his mother and grandmother were kidnapped by an Indian tribe in the course of the American Revolutionary War in 1778 ( Wyoming Valley massacre , 1778). He spent his youth fishing, hunting and collecting Indian art objects . Catlin was taught at the local school in Wilkes-Barre. After five years he was sent to Lichtchfield , Connecticut by his father , where he studied law until 1818 and became a practicing lawyer until 1823. In his 1857 book Life Amongst the Indians , he wrote,
“That another professional passion had taken possession of me, namely painting, to which I was soon completely addicted; and after every inch of my table and my bench had been worked with pocket knife, fountain pen and ink and drawings by judges, juries and perpetrators covered them, I decided to swap my law books for paint pots and brushes and pursue painting, my own calling, the future. "
Journey through the west of America
In 1821, Catlin took classes at the Philadelphia Academy and exhibited his work at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts . From 1824 and 1829 he was a portrait painter in Philadelphia and New York . He received his first major commission in 1824 when he was to make a portrait of DeWitt Clinton , the governor of Texas. In New York he was elected a member of the (recently founded) National Academy of Design . On May 10, 1828, he married Clara Gregory.
Catlin's few commissions included painting Winnebago in Washington, DC , portraying Iroquois, and in 1830 commissioning the group of 101 delegates to the Virginia Constitutional Convention. In the same year he was drawn to the still partially unexplored West, to St. Louis , to paint the Indians in their real habitat.
In December 1831, Catlin devoted his time and work to the Great Plains Indians . His motifs are the personalities of the Indians, their society and their customs. On March 26, 1832, he travels on the Missouri with the Yellow Stone steamship to the Fort Union trading post , near the border between what is now the states of North Dakota and Montana . During the three-month trip, Catlin made small landscape pictures. In the fort he portrayed the Indian tribes Pawnee , Omaha , and Ponca in the south and the Mandan , Cheyenne , Absarokee , Assiniboine , and Blackfeet in the north. In 1841 he wrote of his time in St. Louis:
“I've seen a great number of these savages. I went to great lengths, difficulties and dangers to visit them, but I have had many pleasant experiences. When I was out and about with them, I shook their friendly hands, which have never been contaminated by the touch of money or which the wallet had a firm grip on; I was always warmly welcomed into their wigwams and could always travel unharmed in their territory. And if I have spoken biased, the reader will know to what extent this is permissible for me as an advocate of this people who have treated me kindly, to whom I feel obliged and who have no way of speaking for themselves. "
In 1834, Catlin was allowed to accompany Colonel Henry Leavenworth's Dragoons during the first diplomatic contact with the Comanches . In April of the same year they reached Fort Gibson , where Catlin spent a good two months taking pictures of the Cherokee , Choctaw , Creek and Osage Indians.
In December 1832 he returned to New York. Catlin exhibited his pictures in Pittsburgh , Cincinnati and Louisville . After returning to his wife, Catlin and his wife Clara moved to New Orleans to travel on a pleasure boat to Fort Snelling , Minnesota . There Catlin painted the Chippewa . In the spring of 1836 he visited the holy pipe quarry , a place holy for Indians. He had some samples examined by the mineralogist Charles Thomas Jackson , who named the previously unknown mineral catlinite .
Indian Gallery and Wild West Shows
On September 25, 1837, Catlin opened the successful Indian Gallery in Clinton Hall in New York. Due to the rush of visitors, the exhibition was moved to the Stuyvesant Institute on Broadway . Clinton closed the exhibition in December of the same year when he learned of the arrest of Seminole chief Osceola .
In 1839 Catlin exhibited again in New York and Philadelphia . At the end of the year he sailed for Liverpool , England, and opened his exhibition in the Egyptian Hall in London on February 1, 1840 . In the first year of the exhibition, 32,500 people viewed the 485 landscapes and portraits. Here he also organized events for the first time, at which Indian rituals were first performed by whites and later also by real Indians ( Anishinabe and Iowa ). In the spring of 1845 he also showed the show in Paris , where it was seen by King Louis-Philippe I , George Sand and Victor Hugo , among others . After his wife Clara died of pneumonia , he stopped the performances.
In 1841 Catlin published "Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians" in two volumes with over 300 engravings, which was to become one of his most famous works. In the absence of support in America, he had to have his work printed in London at his own expense. In 1853 he was looking for gold in South America. At the beginning of 1860, Catlin moved to Brussels , where he painted another 600 pictures based on over 300 sketches from the 1830s. After 32 years in Europe and South America, he returned to America in 1871. In early 1872 he settled in Washington DC.
George Catlin died in Jersey City on December 23, 1872 at the age of 76 . He was buried in Brooklyn Cemetery with his wife and son, who died of typhus in 1846 .
Aftermath
Catlin was one of the few researchers who visited the Mandan people in their prime, and he documented the culture of these people. He also described their ethnic peculiarities, because this people was the only tribe in America to have many fair-skinned tribesmen who were not descended from white settlers. The origin of these European-looking tribesmen, whom he even described as blond or blue-eyed, lies in the dark of history. Catlin suggested that Vikings were ancestors, but also described Jewish influences in culture and clothing. He describes in great detail this peaceful people of the West who were effectively wiped out shortly after their visit in 1837 because of diseases (smallpox) brought in by "whites".
Catlin drew many everyday occurrences of the Indians, but also rituals, festivals and portraits. In addition, he made "adapted" Indians ridiculous in cartoons by depicting them as Indians with dignity and in a further picture in which he made ridiculous in apparently "dignified" European clothing. Such images exist from his entire creative period and he takes a clear position for the Indians in their originality, but mocks those chiefs and other dignitaries who, in his opinion, wear European clothing that is inappropriate for them and who dress up as "whites". They seem rather grotesque in his drawings.
Today, the works of Catlin are considered to be unique depictions of “real” Native American life before the influence of the white colonists destroyed the culture of the local people.
gallery
Indian ball game approx. 1846–1850
Ball game dance 1834
Grizzly hunting
Ah-yaw-ne-tak-oár-ron
Cutting ceremony of the Mandan O-kee-pa, male initiation rite , 1832
Little Bear, Hunkpapa Brave, 1832
Wi-jún-jon, en route to and on return from Washington, DC
Grazing Buffalo , 1845
Lacrosse player
_Going_To_and_Returning_From_Washington_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
Publications
- The Indians of North America. Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig / Weimar 1979, DNB 800140680 .
- The Indians of North America. Edition Erdmann, Wiesbaden 2012, ISBN 978-3-86539-830-7 .
Web links
- George Catlin at Google Arts & Culture
- Literature by and about George Catlin in the catalog of the German National Library
- Catlin's works sorted by location
Individual evidence
- ↑ Robert J. Moore: The Indians - Images of the indigenous people of North America . Augsburg 2006, ISBN 3-8289-0819-5 , p. 122.
- ↑ nationalacademy.org: Past Academicians "C" / Catlin, George NA 1826 ( Memento of the original from March 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on June 18, 2015)
- ↑ Robert J. Moore: The Indians - Images of the indigenous people of North America . Augsburg 2006, ISBN 3-8289-0819-5 , p. 125.
- ↑ George Catlin Biography at georgecatlin.org, accessed May 13, 2014.
- ↑ Robert J. Moore: The Indians - Images of the indigenous people of North America . Augsburg 2006, ISBN 3-8289-0819-5 , p. 147.
- ↑ Robert J. Moore: The Indians - Images of the indigenous people of North America . Augsburg 2006, ISBN 3-8289-0819-5 , p. 154.
- ↑ Robert J. Moore: The Indians - Images of the indigenous people of North America . Augsburg 2006, ISBN 3-8289-0819-5 , p. 155.
- ↑ Robert J. Moore: The Indians - Images of the indigenous people of North America . Augsburg 2006, ISBN 3-8289-0819-5 , p. 161.
- ↑ Robert J. Moore: The Indians - Images of the indigenous people of North America . Augsburg 2006, ISBN 3-8289-0819-5 , p. 164.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Catlin, George |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American painter, author, and Indian expert |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 26, 1796 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Wilkes-Barre , Pennsylvania |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 23, 1872 |
| Place of death | Jersey City , New Jersey |