American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists Featuring the Papageorge Family Collection

Note

In 1832, following a fateful encounter with an American Indian delegation to Philadelphia, Wilkes-Barre-born George Catlin embarked for the "vast and pathless wilds” of the “The Great Far West." His intent was to execute “a literal and graphic [delineation] of the living manners, customs, and character of an interesting race of people, who are rapidly passing away from the face of the earth…[while also] snatching from a hasty oblivion what could be saved for the benefit of posterity, and perpetuating it, as a fair and just monument, to the memory of a truly lofty and noble race." The artist-explorer's travels up the Missouri River, and across the Northern Plains, resulted in a near-encyclopedic record of life among the tribes he encountered, subsequently bound and published as Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio (1844). The present group of hand-colored lithographs–14 of the original 31, including Buffalo Dance, Buffalo Hunt, and Snow Shoe Dance–detail the rituals and ceremonies Catlin witnessed firsthand, set against a yet-unspoiled frontier. Sensitively rendered, and remarkable for their insights into Native American culture and traditions, Catlin's depictions complemented predominantly written accounts in the first half of the nineteenth century. Alongside Karl Bodmer's Travels in the Interior of North America (1832-34) and Alfred Jacob Miller's contemporaneous oil paintings, the North American Indian Portfolio remains an enduring ethnographic record–or, as one critic observed, "an artistic and historical volume of very rare merit” (The Times, November 26, 1844).