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Bón-són-gee, New Fire, a Band Chief
George Catlin (born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872)
1834
- 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 called New Fire, a chief of the Kiowa, “a very good man” and described the ornaments hanging on his breast as a boar's tusk and a war whistle. Catlin painted this portrait at a Comanche village in 1834. (Catlin, <i>Letters and Notes</i>, vol. 2, no. 43, 1841; reprint 1973)
