George Catlin: American Indian Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery

The National Portrait Gallery hosts the first major exhibition of George Catlin portraits held in Europe since the 1840s.

During the 1830s Pennsylvanian-born artist and writer George Catlin (1796-1872) made five trips to the western United States to document the Native American peoples and their way of life. The resulting portraits have become one of the most extensive, evocative and important records of indigenous peoples ever made.

Catlin was also an entrepreneur and a showman and, inspired by his encounters, he created an "Indian Gallery" which toured America and Europe during the next 10 years. 

This National Portrait Gallery exhibition of more than 50 portraits is the first time these paintings have been seen together outside America since they returned there in the 1840s. They will be displayed to suggest the sense of spectacle Catlin created during the time of his tour and demonstrate how Catlin constructed a particular image of Native Americans in the minds of his audience.