Catlin, George

Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio. Hunting Scenes and Amusements of the Rocky Mountains and Prairies of America. From Drawings and Notes of the Author, made during Eight Years' Travel amongst Forty-Eight of the Wildest and Most Remote Tribes of Savages in North America. London: Geo. Catlin, Egyptian Hall (C. and J. Adlard, printers of text), 1844



Broadsheets (22 3/4 x 16 3/4 in.; 580 x 225 mm). 25 fine handcolored lithographed plates, heightened with gum arabic, after Catlin by Catlin and McGahey, lithographed by Day and Haghe, new tissue-guards, letterpress title-page and 9 leaves of text; most plates with marginal soiling, a few plates with a bit of scattered foxing, plate 2 with 2 large fox spots, plate 11 with closed marginal tear just into image, plate 18 with very short marginal tear well ouside image, title-page lightly browned, spotted, and offset from corners of binding turn-ins, a bit of soiling and a few marginal tears and repairs to text leaves. Original purple moiré cloth, gilt-lettered on front cover; rebacked and re-cornered in purple calf, extremities rubbed, some fading to cloth.

Wagner-Camp 105a:1; Reese issue I:1; Field, Indian Bibliography 258; McCracken 10; Abbey, Travel 653 note; Schwerdt 1:100

First edition, first issue: a finely colored copy of the only handcolored issue published by Catlin himself. "These beautiful scenes in Indian life are probably the most truthful ever presented to the public" (Field) and are the result of Catlin's eight years of field research and painting among the native peoples of the American West. In a famous passage from the preface, Catlin describes how the sight of an Indian delegation (probably Pawnee and Oto) passing through Philadelphia led to his resolution to record their vanishing way of life: "The history and customs of such a people, preserved by pictorial illustrations, are themes worthy a lifetime of one man, and nothing but the loss of my life shall prevent me from visiting their country and becoming their historian."

Catlin initially planned to publish other thematic portfolios of reproductions of paintings from his Indian Gallery—religious rites, dances, and costumes, for example—but the set of Hunting Scenes and Amusements was the only one he issued. The publication of the Portfolio overextended the artist's resources, and its publication and distribution was very shortly taken over by Henry Bohn. The Bohn issues were colored in an exceptionally bright and vibrant manner, and the present first issue is the only one in which the coloring reflects Catlin's own palette.