Cochimtee Chief, His Wife, and a Warrior
1855/1869
Medium
oil on card mounted on paperboard
Dimensions
overall: 45.8 x 61.3 cm (18 1/16 x 24 1/8 in.)
Classification
Painting
Department
CAB
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Paul Mellon Collection
Accession Number
1965.16.170
Art Historical Context
George Catlin's *Cochimtee Chief, Wife, and a Warrior* (1855/1869) captures a poignant moment from the artist's lifelong dedication to documenting Native American life. A pioneering 19th-century painter, Catlin traveled extensively among Indigenous tribes in the 183s, creating hundreds of portraits to preserve their customs amid rapid U.S. expansion. This oil on card mounted on paperboard—measuring 45.8 x 61.3 cm—likely draws from his earlier fieldwork sketches, refined in his later years for exhibitions like his Indian Gallery. Catlin's realistic style, rooted in Romanticism and ethnography,...
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 ...