Title: Dying Buffalo Bull, in Snow Drift. Plate No. 17.
Artist: George Catlin (1796-1872)
Two-color lithograph, handcolored, 1844.
Published by Day & Haghe, London.
Image size 12 1/8 x 17 13/16" (30.9 x 45.1 cm), plus decorative border.

George Catlin was an American lawyer, painter and author, best known for his artwork and documentation of Native American tribes. "If my life be spared, nothing shall stop me from visiting every nation of Indians on the Continent of North America." It was a race against time. Catlin's desire to document "the looks and customs of the vanishing races of native man in America" collided with the government's implementation of the Indian Removal Act. Many tribes would be extinguished, or face grave loses through disease and abhorrent treatment.

Catlin began life as a lawyer, passing the bar exam in 1818. By 1821 he had abandoned that life in lieu of perusing an artistic career and by the 1830s was out West drawing, painting and documenting the Native Americans. Before the decade was out, he had completed some 500 portraits, landscapes and scenes, which he took on tour through the US and parts of Europe. He called the exhibition his "Indian Gallery" and a "collection of Nature's dignitaries." Catlin certainly wasn't the first to paint the Native Americans, but he is regarded as being the first to show them as human beings, not savages. He dutifully presented the indigenous people in their tribal wear, preforming rituals, hunting in traditional manners, etc, all the while rendering them with a sense of kindness that was so often besmirched of them in his time. Catlin would again tour the country, with parts of South America added in, later in life, producing and additional 200 or so paintings.

In 1944, twenty-five of his paintings were translated into folio-sized lithographs and were sold as the first edition of the "North American Indian Portfolio." Additional lithographs were published in the octavo-sized "Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Condition of the North American Indians", which was published in multiple languages.

Condition: Overall good condition, repaired tear into title. Nicely hand colored.