Window mode follows your eyes with your camera, in this browser only: no picture or position leaves your device.
Bread, Chief of the Tribe
George Catlin (born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872)
1831
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 21 1/4 x 16 1/2 in. (53.9 x 42.0 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 probably painted this image of the Oneida chief Bread in Washington, D.C. in 1831. The artist found his subject to be “a shrewd and talented man, well educated---speaking good English---[he] is handsome, and a polite and gentlemanly man in his deportment.” Catlin also described Bread as “half-blood.” The artist apparently devoted some time to painting Bread, as the portrait is one of the most perceptive and carefully finished of the period. (Truettner, The Natural Man Observed, 1979)
