View on the Upper Mississippi, Beautiful Prairie Bluffs
1835-1836
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
1985.66.312
Tags
About this artwork
George Catlin probably sketched most of the Upper Mississippi River landscapes on his canoe trip from the Falls of St. Anthony to Dubuque in 1835. He mentions frequently that he used pencil and paper to record certain views, and a sketchbook now owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum must have been one that he was carrying at the time. Several consecutive pages of pencil drawings in the SAAM sketchbook are of towns, forts, and scenery observed along the river that reappear, in somewhat mod...
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 ...