Quáy-hám-kay, Stone Shell, a Brave

About this artwork

George Catlin wrote that Stone Shell, a Kiowa brave, was “another fair specimen of the warriors of this tribe,” and that he was “somewhat allied to the mysteries and arcana of the healing art, from the close company he keeps with my friend Dr. Findley, who is surgeon to the regiment, and by whom I have been employed to make a copy of my portrait of this distinguished personage.” Catlin painted Stone Shell at a Comanche village in 1834. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 43, 1841; re...

Art Historical Context

George Catlin's *Quáy-hám-kay, Stone Shell, a Brave (1834) captures the dignified likeness of a Kiowa warrior during Catlin's groundbreaking travels among Native American tribes in the American. As a pioneering artist and ethnographer, Catlin painted over 600 portraits in the 1830s to document Indigenous peoples before rapid cultural changes from European-American expansion. This oil portrait, now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, exemplifies realistic style, emphasizing the subject's noble bearing and tribal regalia to convey authenticity and humanity. Catlin himself described Stone Sh...

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 ...