The Red Man's bones : George Catlin, artist and showman Cover Image

The Red Man's bones : George Catlin, artist and showman / Benita Eisler.

Summary:

George Catlin has been called the "first artist of the West," as none before him lived among and painted the Native American tribes of the Northern Plains. Catlin found his calling: to fix the image of a "vanishing race" before their "extermination"--his word. In the first six years of the 1830s, he created over six hundred portraits--unforgettable likenesses of individual chiefs, warriors, braves, squaws, and children belonging to more than thirty tribes living along the upper Missouri River. Political forces thwarted Catlin's ambition to sell what he called his "Indian Gallery" as a national collection, and in 1840 the artist began three decades of self-imposed exile abroad. For a time, he was the most celebrated American expatriate in London and Paris. But when he started to tour "live" troupes of Ojibwa and Iowa, his fortunes declined: he changed from artist to showman, and from advocate to exploiter. Tragedy and loss engulfed them. This humane portrait brings Catlin and his Indian subjects to life for our own time.--From publisher description.

Record details

ISBN: 0393066169
ISBN: 9780393066166
Physical Description: viii, 468 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm
Edition: First edition
Publisher: New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2013]

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 411-442) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Homecoming -- Away -- George Catlin, academician -- A journeyman artist -- Wanderers -- A free man -- Savage and civilized tribes -- Border crossings -- The fur fortress -- "White medicine man" -- A stranger in paradise -- O-kee-pa -- "Problems of shade, shadow and perspective" -- A man who makes pictures for a traveling show -- "We are invaders of a sacred soil" -- "Catlin encamped, wolves in the distance" -- Flight paths -- The Pipestone Quarry -- A "go-a-head" artist -- "Without fortune and without patronage" -- The great and the good -- High society -- "Tableaux villains" -- "Indians! Real Indians!" -- George Catlin's wild west show -- Déjà vu, all over again -- A flight of royals -- "A thing belonging to us" -- Magical mystery tours -- "Now I am G. Catlin again, look out for the paint!"