# Mong-shóng-sha, Bending Willow, Wife of Great Chief

- By: George Catlin (born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872)
- Date: 1832
- Medium: oil on canvas
- Classification: Paintings
- Dimensions: 29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 60.9 cm)
- Culture: Indians of North America
- Credit line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
- Museum: [Smithsonian Institution](https://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=3912)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/9bc0957695374af059d2cf97ecaa6fb8.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

“I visited the wigwam of \[Great Chief\] . . . several times,” George Catlin wrote, “and saw his four modest little wives seated around the fire, where all seemed to harmonize very well; . . . I selected \[Bending Willow\] . . . for her portrait, and painted it . . . in a very pretty dress of deer skins, and covered with a young buffalo's robe, which was handsomely ornamented, and worn with much grace and pleasing effect.” The artist painted this portrait at a Ponca village in 1832. (Catlin, Letters and Notes , vol. 1, no. 26, 1841; reprint 1973)