The Red Man's Bones: George Catlin, Artist and Showman

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. After a false start as a painter of miniatures, Catlin found his calling: to fix the image of a "vanishing race" before their "extermination"--his word--by a government greedy for their lands. 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, his exhibitions and writings made him the most celebrated American expatriate in London and Paris. He was toasted by Queen Victoria and breakfasted with King Louis-Philippe, who created a special gallery in the Louvre to show his pictures. But when he started to tour "live" troupes of Ojibbewa and Iowa, Catlin and his fortunes declined: He changed from artist to showman, and from advocate to exploiter of his native performers. Tragedy and loss engulfed both.

This brilliant and humane portrait brings to life George Catlin and his Indian subjects for our own time. An American original, he still personifies the artist as a figure of controversy, torn by conflicting demands of art and success.

Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 07/22/2013
ISBN: 9780393066166
Pages: 480
Weight: 1.90lbs
Size: 9.50h x 6.50w x 1.49d
Award: L.A. Times Book Prize - Finalist

Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 02/15/2013 pg. 73
Publishers Weekly 03/25/2013
Kirkus Reviews 06/01/2013
Booklist 06/01/2013 pg. 27
Library Journal 07/01/2013 pg. 79
New Yorker (The) 09/23/2013 pg. 115
Kirkus Best Nonfiction 12/01/2013 pg. 12
Choice 01/01/2014
Library Journal 02/15/2013