Mong-shóng-sha, Bending Willow, Wife of Great Chief

About this artwork

“I visited the wigwam of [Great Chief] . . . several times,” George Catlin wrote, “and saw his four modest little wives seated around the fire, where all seemed to harmonize very well; . . . I selected [Bending Willow] . . . for her portrait, and painted it . . . in a very pretty dress of deer skins, and covered with a young buffalo's robe, which was handsomely ornamented, and worn with much grace and pleasing effect.” The artist painted this portrait at a Ponca village in 1832. (Catlin,...

Art Historical Context

In 1832, renowned artist George Catlin painted *Mong-shóng-sha,ending Willow, Wife of Chief* during his travels among the Ponca people in their village along the Missouri River. Catlin, a pioneering chronicler of Native American life in the early 19th century, to capture the dignity and daily realities of Indigenous cultures before widespread European settlement altered them forever. This oil portrait depicts Bending Willow, one of four wives of a Ponca chief, seated in a deer-skin dress adorned with a handsomely ornamented young buffalo robe, as described by the artist himself. Catlin's firs...

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 ...