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Picturesque Bluffs above Prairie du Chien
George Catlin (born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872)
1835-1836
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 19 5/8 x 27 1/2 in. (49.7 x 70.0 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
In addition to portraits of Native Americans, George Catlin captured images of the western landscape, and recorded his responses to the West’s remarkable beauty in his travel account Letters and Notes. “There is a something that fills and feeds the mind of an enthusiastic man,” Catlin wrote, “when he is thrown upon natural resources, amidst the rude untouched scenes of nature, which cannot be described; and I leave the world to imagine the feelings of pleasure with which I found myself again out of the din of artful life, among scenes of grandeur worthy the whole soul’s devotion, and admiration.” (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 52, 1841; reprint 1973)
