Eight Years Travels, with his North American Indian Collection, 1st/1st 2v 1848

Description: Author: Catlin, George Title: Catlin's Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe, with his North American Indian Collection. With Anecdotes and Incidents of the Travels and Adventures of Three different parties of American Indians whom he introduced to the courts of England, France, and Belgium. Place: London Publisher: The Author Dates: 1848 Number of volumes: 2 Description: 8vo. (8-3/4" x 5-3/4") 3/4 dark brown morocco, 5 ribs, 2 panels with gilt stamped title and vol. number, remaining 4 panel have heavy gilt decoration, year at foot, worn marble covers and matching marbled endpapers, worn covers, top edge gilt. Good. FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING. Free shipping via UPS for United States purchaser. This is Catlin's interesting account of touring several actual Native Americans alongside his Indian Gallery through Europe. Field 256; Sabin 11533. George Catlin was born in 1796 in Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. While growing up, George encountered "trappers, hunters, explorers and settlers who stayed with his family on their travels west." As his father had trained at Litchfield Law School, George was sent there when he was 17, although he disliked the field of law.[4] He was admitted to the Bar in 1819 and practiced law for two years before giving it up to travel and study art. In 1823, he studied art in Philadelphia and became known for his work as a portraitist. After a meeting with "tribal delegation of Indians from the western frontier, Catlin became eager to preserve a record of Native American customs and individuals." Catlin began his journey in 1830 when he accompanied Governor William Clark on a diplomatic mission up the Mississippi River into Native American territory. St. Louis became Catlin's base of operations for five trips he took between 1830 and 1836, eventually visiting fifty tribes. Two years later he ascended the Missouri River more than 1900 miles to Fort Union Trading Post, near what is now the North Dakota-Montana border, where he spent several weeks among indigenous people who were still relatively untouched by European culture. He visited eighteen tribes, including the Pawnee, Omaha, and Ponca in the south and the Mandan, Hidatsa, Cheyenne, Crow, Assiniboine, and Blackfeet to the north. There he produced the most vivid and penetrating portraits of his career. During later trips along the Arkansas, Red, and Mississippi rivers, as well as visits to Florida and the Great Lakes, he produced more than 500 paintings and gathered a substantial collection of artifacts. When Catlin returned east in 1838, he assembled the paintings and numerous artifacts into his Indian Gallery and began delivering public lectures that drew on his personal recollections of life among the American Indians. Catlin traveled with his Indian Gallery to major cities such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and New York. He hung his paintings "salon style"-side by side and one above another. Visitors identified each painting by the number on the frame, as listed in Catlin's catalogue. Soon afterward, he began a lifelong effort to sell his collection to the U.S. government. The touring Indian Gallery did not attract the paying public Catlin needed to stay financially sound, and the United States Congress rejected his initial petition to purchase the works. In 1839 Catlin took his collection across the Atlantic for a tour of European capitals. As a showman and entrepreneur, he initially attracted crowds to his Indian Gallery in London, Brussels, and Paris. The French critic Charles Baudelaire remarked on Catlin's paintings, "He has brought back alive the proud and free characters of these chiefs, both their nobility and manliness." Catlin wanted to sell his Indian Gallery to the U.S. government to have his life's work preserved intact. His continued attempts to persuade various officials in Washington, D.C. to buy the collection failed. In 1852 he was forced to sell the original Indian Gallery, now 607 paintings, due to personal debts. The industrialist Joseph Harrison acquired the paintings and artifacts, which he stored in a factory in Philadelphia, as security. Catlin spent the last 20 years of his life trying to re-create his collection, and recreated more than 400 paintings. This second collection of paintings is known as the "Cartoon Collection", since the works are based on the outlines he drew of the works from the 1830s. In 1841 Catlin published Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, in two volumes, with approximately 300 engravings. Three years later he published 25 plates, entitled Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio, and, in 1848, Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe. From 1852 to 1857 he traveled through South and Central America and later returned for further exploration in the Far West. The record of these later years is contained in Last Rambles amongst the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes (1868) and My Life among the Indians (ed. by N. G. Humphreys, 1909). Paintings of his Spanish American Indians are published.

Price: 600 USD

Location: Roswell, GA

End Time: 2024-08-08T17:36:51.000Z

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