Mah-to-toh-pa, the Mandan Chief
Medium
Graphic Arts-Print
Classification
Graphic Arts-Print
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of Natural History, Department of Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution
Accession Number
1985.66.386,593FF
Tags
Art Historical Context
**Mah-to-toh-pa, the Mandan Chief** is a striking full-length print by George Catlin, the pioneering 19th-century American artist renowned for his ethnographic portraits of Native American peoples. Captured in the graphic arts medium, this work likely reproduces one of Catlin's original oil paintings from his extensive travels among the tribes of the Great Plains in the 1830s. Housed in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, it exemplifies Catlin's mission to document indigenous cultures before they were irrevocably altered by European settlement. The subject, Mah-to-toh-pa (also known as Four ...
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 ...