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Coo-coo-coo, The Owl, an Aged Chief
George Catlin (born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872)
1836
- 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
George Catlin described Menominee chief Coo-coo-coo as a “very aged and emaciated chief, whom I painted at Green Bay, in Fort Howard. He had been a distinguished man, but now in his dotage, being more than 100 years old---and a great pet of the surgeon and officers of the post.” This portrait was painted in 1836 when Catlin stopped at Green Bay on his way to the Pipestone Quarry. (Truettner, The Natural Man Observed, 1979)
