RED MAN'S BONES: George Catlin

Artist and showman, this is the first biography in over 60 years for the great American artist who paintings are more famous than the man who made them. George Catlin (1796-1872) has been called the 'first artist of the West' as none before him had lived among and painted the Native American tribes of the Northern Plains. After a false start as a painter of miniatures, he found his calling to fix the image of a 'vanishing race' before their 'extermination' - his word - by a government greedy for their lands. In the first six decades of the 1830s, Catlin created over 600 portraits, unforgettable likenesses of individual chiefs, warriors, braves, squaws, and children, belonging to more than 30 tribes living along the upper Missouri River. Political forces thwarted his ambitions to sell what he called his 'Indian Gallery' as a national collection. In 1840, the artist began three decades of self-imposed exile abroad and his exhibitions and writings made him the most celebrated American expatriate in London and Paris, toasted by Queen Victoria. He breakfasted with King Louis-Philippe, who created a special gallery in the Louvre to show his pictures. But when he started to tour 'live' troupes of Ojibwe and Iowa, Catlin and his fortunes declined. He changed from artist to showman, advocate to exploiter of his native performers, and tragedy and loss engulfed him. Torn by conflicting demands of art and success, this is a brilliant portrait of the academician who understood the 'savage and civilised tribes', the fur trade, white medicine man, invaders of scared soil, wolves, his Wild West Show, magical mystery tours and more. Eight pages of colour photos and many other illus. US first edition.