Artwork Details
- Title
- River Bluffs, 1320 Miles above St. Louis
- Artist
- Date
- 1832
- Location
- Dimensions
- 11 1⁄4 x 14 3⁄8 in. (28.5 x 36.6 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- oil on canvas
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Indian
- Figure male
- Landscape — river
- Western
- Object Number
- 1985.66.399
Artwork Description
On his long river voyage of 1832, George Catlin painted dream-like views of sunlit bluffs on the upper Missouri that preserve a now-lost world. Indians had shaped this landscape by setting fires that curbed tree growth; when the Indians were gone, so were the “beautiful clear-cut outlines of these billowy slopes.”
George Catlin's Indian Gallery is an unparalleled collection of great artistic and historic significance that contributes to understanding America's frontier and the cultures of the Native Americans who lived there. George Catlin (1796-1872) was the first major artist to travel beyond the Mississippi to record what he called the "manner and customs" of American Indians, painting scenes and portraits from life. He wanted to document these native cultures before they were irrevocably altered by settlement of the frontier and the mass migrations forced by the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Between 1830 and 1836, Catlin took five trips across the Great Plains, eventually visiting fifty tribes. The nearly complete surviving set of Catlin's first Indian Gallery, painted in the 1830s, constitutes more than five hundred works.
Smithsonian American Art Museum: Commemorative Guide. Nashville, TN: Beckon Books, 2015.