Charles Bird King, Painter of Indian 

 Visitors to the Nation's Capital 



By John C. Ewers 



Associate Curator, Division of Ethnology 

 U. S. National Museum 



[With 8 plates] 



Among the many artists who depicted the North American Indians 

 in the days before the development of photography, Charles Bird 

 King enjoyed a unique and rather paradoxical distinction. King 

 never set foot on American soil west of the Mississippi River. Never- 

 theless, he was the first white man known to record in oils the physi- 

 cal appearances and picturesque dress costumes of many Indian 

 leaders of the Great Plains tribes. It is doubtful if King ever saw 

 an Indian village. Yet he painted from life portraits of Indian 

 leaders from more than a score of tribes. Except for those intrepid 

 paintbrush pioneers, George Catlin and John Mix Stanley, who 

 traveled extensively amid the dangers and inconveniences of the 

 Indian country, no other artist of the precamera period painted a 

 larger or more varied series of Indian portraits. 



Charles Bird King was l:)orn in Newport, R. I., in 1785. He showed 

 an early interest in painting that was encouraged by some of the best 

 artists of his day. Samuel King of Newport, instructor of Allston 

 and Malbone, was his first teacher. Later (probably from 1800 to 

 1805) he studied under Edward Savage in New York. Thereafter, 

 he spent 7 years in London, where he roomed with Thomas Sully and 

 had the advantage of Benjamin West's instruction. In 1812 he re- 

 turned to this country. For 4 years he worked at his easel in Phila- 

 delphia with little success. In 1816 he moved to Washington, D. C. 

 Here he remained until his death on March 18, 1862. 



Here, at the seat of government, King achieved a reputation as a 

 painter of portraits of socially and politically prominent persons 

 of his time. Among his sitters were John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, 

 and John Howard Payne, famed writer of "Home Sweet Home." King 

 built a studio and gallery on the east side of Twelfth Street between 



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