A descriptive catalogue of Catlin's Indian gallery : containing portraits, landscapes, costumes, &c., and representations of the manners and customs of the North American Indians. Collected and painted entirely by Mr. Catlin ... Exhibiting at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, London.

  • Catlin, George, 1796-1872.
Date:
[1840]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A descriptive catalogue of Catlin's Indian gallery : containing portraits, landscapes, costumes, &c., and representations of the manners and customs of the North American Indians. Collected and painted entirely by Mr. Catlin ... Exhibiting at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, London. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1/46
    TO THE READER, I wish to inform the visitors to my Gallery that, having some years since become fully convinced of the rapid decline and certain extinction of the numerous tribes of the North American Indians; and seeing also the vast importance and value which a full pictorial history of these interesting but dying people might be to future ages—I sat out alone, unaided and unadvised, resolved, (if my life should be spared), by the aid of my brush and my pen, to rescue from oblivion so much of their primitive looks and customs as the industry and ardent enthusiasm of one lifetime could accomplish, and set them up in a Gallery unique and imperishable, for the use and benefit of future ages. I have already devoted more than seven years of my life exclusively to the accom¬ plishment of my design, and that with more than expected success. I have visited with great difficulty, and some hazard to life, forty-eight tribes, (residing within the United States, and British and Mexican Territories ;) containing about 300,000 souls. I have seen them in their own villages, have carried my canvass and colours the whole way, and painted my portraits, &c. from the life, as they now stand and are seen in the Gallery. The collection contains (besides an immense number of costumes and other manufac¬ tures) 310 Portraits of distinguished men and women of the different tribes, and 200 other Paintings, descriptive of Indian Countries, their Villages, Games and Customs; containing in all above 3000 figures. As this immense collection has been gathered, and every painting has been made from nature, by my own hand —and that too, when I have been paddling my canoe, or leading my pack-horse over and through trackless wilds, at the hazard of my life ;_the world will surely be kind and indulgent enough to receive and estimate them, as they have been intended, as true andfacsimile traces of individual and historical facts ; and forgive me for their present unfinished and unstudied condition, as works of art. The entire collection is now arranged in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, covering the walls of a room 106 feet in length. January, 1840. GEO. CATLIN.