Wáh-pe-say, The White
1830
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
1985.66.250
Tags
About this artwork
âI have visited forty-eight different tribes, the greater part of which I found speaking different languages, and containing in all 400,000 souls. I have brought home safe, and in good order, 310 portraits in oil, all painted in their native dress, and in their own wigwams . . . as well as a very extensive and curious collection of their costumes, and all their other manufactures, from the size of a wigwam down to the size of a quill or a rattle.â George Catlin probably painted the White, a ...
Art Historical Context
**Wáh-pe-say, The White** is a striking oil portrait by George Catlin, painted in 1830 at Fort Leavenworth in present-day Kansas. The subject, a member of the Wea/Miami tribe, embodies the dignity and individuality Catlin sought to capture in his extensive documentation of Native American peoples. As one of Catlin's 310 oil portraits executed on-site in tribal wigwams, it showcases traditional dress and authentic settings, preserving a vanishing way of life amid rapid American expansion. Catlin, a self-taught artist driven by a passion for ethnography, traveled extensively in the 1830s, visit...
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 ...