Landscape Background
1846-1848
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
1985.66.564-U
Tags
About this artwork
âThe landscape scenes of these wild and beautiful regions, are, of themselves, a rich reward for the traveler.â (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 37, 1841; reprint 1973)
Art Historical Context
George Catlin's *Landscape Background* (1846-1848), a captivating painting from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, evokes the untamed beauty of the American West. As a pioneering 19th-century artist, Catlin traveled extensively through frontier territories in the 1830s, documenting Native American life and the dramatic landscapes that framed it. This work, gifted by Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., captures the essence of those "wild and beautiful regions" Catlin so passionately described in his *Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of the North American Indians* (1841): “The ...
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 ...