Beschreibung:

Catlin (George, 1796-1872) Wah-ro-née-sah, The Surrounder, Chief of the Tribe, watercolour over graphite, heightened with white, inscribed 'Chief of the Ottoes' in the lower section and numbered '117' in the upper right corner, on cream wove paper without a watermark, sheet 245 x 162 mm. (9 5/8 x 6 3/8 in), unframed, [circa 1832] Provenance: Acquired directly from the artist, circa 1840s or slightly later; Captain William Henry Shippard; Then by descent to the present owners Literature: cf. Catlin, George, 'A Descriptive Catalogue of Catlin's Indian Gallery', 1840, no. 117 ⁂ An early and previously unrecorded study of the 'Chief of the Ottoes'. Catlin produced a fully worked oil painting of the sitter in 1832, probably from when he was at Fort Leavenworth (modern day Kansas), which is now held in the Smithsonian American Art Museum (see object no. 1985.66.117). "[I] painted thus many of my pictures in water colours during my 8 years travels, and most, though not all of them I enlarged onto canvass, wishing my collection to be all in oil painting" [1] Another watercolour of Wah-ro-née-sah is held in the Gilcrease Museum collection (no. 0226.1542 (117)), but dates from the early 1840s and is much smaller than the present "cabinet picture"; this variant was most likely executed after the work currently offered, and intended to be used as an illustration for the second edition of James Cowles Prichard's 'Natural History of Man'. Other examples of Catlin's watercolours held in the Gilcrease collection are however more suitable comparisons to the present work, particularly the earlier portraits associated with Catlin's visit to the tribes living around Cantonment Leavenworth in Kansas in 1830 (for example see museum nos. 0226.1570 (279) and 0226.1559 (243)). These portraits all share the same careful modelling of the heads with wash laid over graphite underdrawing, alongside a much looser sketchy execution of the torsos. Joan Carpenter Troccoli has suggested that Catlin may have travelled with a sketchbook in which he made preliminary watercolour studies of his subjects, which he later mounted and finished'. [2] Catlin described Wah-ro-née-sah as "quite an old man; his shirt made of the skin of a grizzly bear, with the claws on"; he lived in spacious timber lodges perched on a ridge overlooking the Platte River, and his bear claw necklace suggests he was a member of the Bear Clan, which shared leadership of the Otoes with the Buffalo Clan. [3] [1] Truettner, William H., The Natural Man Observed, 1979, p. 131 [2] Troccoli, Joan Carpenter, First Artist of the West, George Catlin Paintings and Watercolours from the collection of the Gilcrease Museum, 1993, p. 20 [3] Gurney and Heyman (Ed.), George Catlin and His Indian Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, exhb. cat., 2002, p. 126