Shown from the chest up, a man with brown skin wears indigenous Iowa attire and looks just off to our left with heavy-lidded eyes in this vertical portrait painting. He faces us against a background mottled with pale turquoise and cream white. The sides of the man’s square face, the top of his bald head, and his neck are painted a bright orange-red. His ears, lips, and eyelids are also red. Deep lines run across his forehead and down under high cheekbones, to either side of his nose and his closed mouth. His spiky headdress fans like a fountain from around a small cap at the center of the…
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See-non-ty-a, an Iowa Medicine Man

George Catlin (American, 1796 - 1872)

1844/1845

Medium
oil on canvas
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
overall: 71 × 58 cm (27 15/16 × 22 13/16 in.) ; framed: 86.04 × 73.03 × 5.72 cm (33 7/8 × 28 3/4 × 2 1/4 in.)
Culture
American
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CAB
Credit line
Paul Mellon Collection
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed

View at the National Gallery of Art

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