The Two Most Celebrated Artists of Indian Life and the American Frontier: George Catlin and Karl Bodmer

George Catlin and Karl Bodmer were the first artists to journey up the Missouri River and penetrate deep into the American frontier. The superb images they published after their journeys captured the essence of American Indian life and the untamed beauty of the West. The importance of their illustrations is much more than aesthetic, for these two great series of prints are the finest records of the Plains Indians before the epidemics of the mid-19th century decimated their numbers, and before the expansion of the frontier took their lands. When he attempted the perilous journey in 1827, Catlin's goal was to persuade his contemporaries that Native American culture should be honored and preserved. The artist's stunning lithographs range from portraits to depictions of tribal ceremonies, from the anecdotal to the idealized. Catlin appealed to his readers with the thrill of the hunt and the mystery of ritual, and the immediacy of his images is irresistible, drawing viewers into the scenes and portraits with unprecedented intimacy. Karl Bodmer was a Swiss painter chosen by Prince Maximilian of Prussia to accompany his voyage to America, in order to document in pictorial terms the expedition. They traveled among the Plains Indians from 1832 to 1834, when the Plains and the Rockies were still virtually unknown, and before acculturation had begun to change the lives of the Indians. These prints rank with the finest Western art in any medium.