484 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1955 



canvas the appearance of the land and its people, scholars and the pub- 

 lic are gaining an understanding of the true significance of his paint- 

 ings as pictorial documents of the old West. 



THE MAKING OF A PAINTBRUSH PIONEER 



George Catlin was bom in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on July 26, 1796. As 

 a boy his interest in American Indians was aroused by Indian legends 

 and stories of Indian captivities which were current in his neighbor- 

 hood. His own mother, as a girl, had been taken prisoner by Indians 

 in the bloody Wyoming Massacre of 1778. Young George loved the 

 outdoors and cared much more for the world of nature than that of 

 schoolbooks. He was fond of hunting and fishing. He also collected 

 flint arrowheads and other Indian relics. 



At the request of his lawyer father, George Catlin entered the law 

 school of Reeves and Gould at Litchfield, Conn., in 1817. Next year 

 he passed his bar examinations and began the practice of law in 

 Lucerne, Pa. But his heart was not in the courtroom. Rather he was 

 becoming more and more interested in art. Finally he sold his law 

 books, abandoned his legal career, and moved to Philadelphia to devote 

 full time to painting. 



As a painter Catlin was entirely self-taught. With characteristic 

 enthusiasm and industry he worked at his art until he developed skill 

 both as a miniature painter in watercolors and as a portrait painter in 

 oils. In 1824 he was elected an academician of the Pennsylvania 

 Academy of Fine Arts, a select company that numbered among its 

 members such masters of the period as Charles Willson Peale, Rem- 

 brandt Peale, and Thomas Sully. In 1828, 12 of Catlin's works (in- 

 cluding both drawings and paintings) were exhibited by the Ameri- 

 can Academy of Fine Arts, One of these was a full-length portrait 

 of the late Gov. De Witt Clinton of New York State, which Catlin 

 had painted for the Corporation of the City of New York. 



The fame of some of his sitters and the acceptance of his paintings 

 in important exhibitions indicate that Catlin early achieved a degree 

 of success as a portraitist. Yet he was restless, dissatisfied. As he 

 himself later explained it, he was "continually reaching for some 

 branch or enterprise of the arts on which to devote a whole life-time 

 of enthusiasm." (Catlin, 1841, vol. 1. p. 2.) 



Wliile he was trying to find himself, Catlin saw some 10 or 15 

 Indian members of a delegation from the wilds of the "Far West" 

 who were passing through Philadelphia on their way to visit the Great 

 White Father in Washington. Sight of their handsome features and 

 picturesque costumes rekindled Catlin's youthful enthusiasm for 

 Indians. It changed the course of his career and provided him with 

 a goal for his life's work. In later years he worded his new resolve 

 thus: 



