Wi-Jun-Jon, An Assinneboin Chief, 1844 Purchased with funds donated by the Kemper Foundations

George Catlin (American, 1796-1872) George Catlin's life (1796-1872) is a fascinating tale of a self-taught artist. He was trained as a lawyer in Philadelphia, but his calling was to become a painter. In 1828, upon seeing a delegation of stately western Indians he declared "nothing short of the loss of my life, shall prevent me from visiting their country, and becoming their historian." He yearned to produce images of what he thought was a vanishing culture. Ultimately, his trips to the Great Plains to paint American Indians cost him a life with his wife and children. The first white artist to travel deep into the American West and record the appearance and customs of the native peoples, Catlin spent six years in the 1830s painting Indian subjects and gathering artifacts for his huge "North American Indian Gallery," which he toured through North America and Europe in the late 1830s and early 1840s. The North American Indian Portfolio, a group of hand-colored lithographs based on his original paintings, and originally to have numbered four volumes, was intended to generate income, but the cost of the publication proved too high for the popular market, and Catlin lost money on the venture. Only the first volume, subtitled Hunting Scenes and Amusements of the Rocky Mountains and Prairies of America, was published. (Catlin's Indian Gallery also proved too expensive to maintain, and eventually ruined the artist financially.)