2017 Coeur d’Alene Art Auction / Lot 105
VERSO
Label, Biltmore Galleries, Scottsdale, AZ
According to Catlin historian Joan Carpenter Troccoli, “Europeans liked Catlin’s sporting pictures—his images of hunting—the best of all his works, and he made a number of versions for clients abroad of subjects first sketched in the early 1830s.”
In the introduction to his 1840 catalog Catlin stated, “I wish to inform the visitors to my Gallery that, having some years since become fully convinced of the rapid decline and certain extinction of the numerous tribes of the North American Indians, and seeing also the vast importance and value which a full pictorial history of these interesting but dying people might be to future ages—I sat out alone, unaided and unadvised, resolved, (if my life should be spared), by the aid of my brush and my pen, to rescue from oblivion so much of their primitive looks and customs as the industry and ardent enthusiasm of one lifetime could accomplish, and set them up in a Gallery unique and imperishable, for the use and benefit of future ages.”
PROVENANCE
Biltmore Galleries, Scottsdale, AZ Private Collection, AZ 1980