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Mi-néek-ee-súnk-te-ka, Mink, a Beautiful Girl
George Catlin (born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872)
1832
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 60.9 cm)
- Culture
- Indians of North America
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), 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 Smithsonian Institution
About this work
According to George Catlin, Mink posed in a “mountain-sheep skin dress, ornamented with porcupine-quills, beads, and elk's teeth.” He described the Mandans as “people whose complexions appear as light as half breeds; and amongst the women particularly, there are many whose skins are almost white, with the most pleasing symmetry and proportion of features; with hazel, with grey, and with blue eyes,---with mildness and sweetness of expression, and excessive modesty of demeanour, which render them exceedingly pleasing and beautiful.” Catlin painted the girl’s portrait at a Mandan village in 1832. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 1, no. 13, 1841, reprint 1973, and 1848 Catalogue, Catlin’s Indian Gallery, SAAM online exhibition)
