Elk and Buffalo Grazing among Prairie Flowers, Texas

George Catlin, Elk and Buffalo Grazing among Prairie Flowers, Texas, 1846-1848, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.580
Copied George Catlin, Elk and Buffalo Grazing among Prairie Flowers, Texas, 1846-1848, oil on canvas, 19 5827 12 in. (49.770.0 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr., 1985.66.580
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Artwork Details

Title
Elk and Buffalo Grazing among Prairie Flowers, Texas
Date
1846-1848
Location
Not on view
Dimensions
19 5827 12 in. (49.770.0 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
Mediums
Mediums Description
oil on canvas
Classifications
Keywords
  • Western
  • Landscape — Texas
  • Landscape — plain
  • Animal — deer
  • Animal — buffalo
Object Number
1985.66.580

Artwork Description

During his travels through the western frontier, George Catlin saw the incredible numbers of buffalo that lived on the Plains. He called them “noble animals,” and understood that overhunting in the West would destroy them, “leaving these beautiful green fields a vast and idle waste.” He saw them “grazing on the plains of the country to which they appropriately belong.” “Their colour is a dark brown,” Catlin wrote, “but changing very much as the season varies from warm to cold; their hair or fur, from its great length in the winter and spring, and exposure to the weather, turning quite light, and almost to a jet black, when the winter coat is shed off, and a new growth is shooting out.” (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 1, no. 31, 1841; reprint 1973)