Review of Catlin and His Contemporaries; The Politics of Patronage

Authors

• Colin G. Calloway, University of Wyoming

Date of this Version

1992

Document Type

Article

Comments

Published in Great Plains Quarterly 12:1 (Winter 1992). Copyright © 1992 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Abstract

Brian Dippie provides a corrective to the image of George Catlin as a hopeless romantic. Stung by criticism in eastern artistic circles, Catlin headed west on "a new path to fame and fortune" (p. 11). After a few years visiting the Indians, he spent more than thirty years hustling to find a patron and to market his work. That he failed to do so was not for want of effort. According to Dippie, Catlin would "try anything to make a dollar from his art" (p. 21) and Indians were worth more to him dead than alive once he had captured their likenesses: "Catlin's heart might bleed, but his eye was coolly fixed on the main chance" (p. 117).