Bi-éets-ee-cure, Very Sweet Man
1832
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
Accession Number
1985.66.169
Tags
About this artwork
George Catlin painted this image of Very Sweet Man, a member of the Crow/Apsaalooke tribe, at Fort Union in 1832. The figure wears over his temples a pair of hair bows, decorated with beads imported from Venice in the 1830s by white traders on the Upper Missouri. (Truettner, The Natural Man Observed, 1979)
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 ...