150 BALCH— THE ART OF GEORGE CATLIN. 



early in Colonial times and this type resembles the thin gaunt Amer- 

 ican type of to-day. The other type, which is most apparent in the 

 incident pictures, resembles the Alongol type, both in the faces and 

 in the figures, which are decidedly squat. The latter type often 

 suggests the faces in Aztec or Maya art. jMr. Huntington Wilson, 

 former assistant Secretary of State, tells me that he observed two 

 types among the Indians of South America, one on the high Andes, 

 the other in the hot forest lowlands east of the Andes. Apparently 

 Catlin observed something of the kind among the Indians of the 

 Northern Plains. 



Color and also values, that is light and shade, Catlin gets very 

 realistically. He never attempted to solve any artistic problem in 

 color nor in light and shade ; he simply painted his subjects straight- 

 forwardly and quickly as well as he could. He was absolutely 

 sincere in trying to render what he saw. In the real sense of the 

 word, therefore, his works are genuine realistic impressions. But 

 they have not a semblance of so-called impressionismi. His lines, 

 values and colors are always an attempt to present as nearly as he 

 could a scene in nature. His color is sober. Evidently he thought 

 much of local color and little of artistic color schemes. There is 

 no decorative quality in his work. The true function of decora- 

 tive painting is to make patterns of lines and patches of colors into 

 decorations, not to represent or imitate nature. And there are no 

 line patterns nor patches of color work in any of Catlin's pictures. 

 What he does get in his coloring is a most remarkably faithful 

 rendition of the colors of nature. 



The accurate rendition of the colors of nature is shown forcibly 

 in some of Catlin's pictures of South American forests. In them 

 he shows great nerve in tackling the, from our usual pictorial stand- 

 point, utterly unpictorial subjects of the swamps and jungles, whose 

 color might be called a vegetable green monochrome. He suggests 

 the sogginess, the pestilential malarial character of these South 

 American swamps in a wonderful way. His forests give the im- 

 pression of forests, his trees really look like trees in a forest, much 

 more so than does much of the more learned work of the later 

 European painters, then for instance, the forests of some of the 

 Barbizon men or of some of the impressionists. And he succeeds, 



