Athapasca Chief, His Wife, and a Warrior
1855/1869
Medium
oil on card mounted on paperboard
Dimensions
overall: 45.5 x 62 cm (17 15/16 x 24 7/16 in.)
Classification
Painting
Department
CAB
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Paul Mellon Collection
Accession Number
1965.16.164
Art Historical Context
George Catlin's *Athapasca Chief, Wife, and a Warrior (1855/1869) captures a poignant moment from Indigenous life in North America. Painted in oil on card mounted on paperboard—a compact, portable medium suited to Catlin's peripatetic style—this 45.5 x 62 cm work belongs to the National Gallery of's Paul Mellon Collection. Catlin, a pioneering 19th-century American artist, devoted his career to documenting Native American peoples their traditional ways were overtaken by westward expansion. As part of Catlin's vast ethnographic project, which included over 600 portraits from his 1830s travels ...
About the Artist
George Catlin · 1796–1872
George Catlin (1796–1872), born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to Putnam Catlin and Polly Sutton—who had been captured by Native Americans during the 1778 Battle of Wyoming—initially pursued a legal career. Trained at Litchfield Law School, he was admitted to the bar in 1819 but abandoned law after two years to study art in Philadelphia in 1823. Self-taught as a portraitist, Catlin quickly gained ...