![]() ![]() Exhibiting his art in England had been one of his long-term aims, but only if his goal of finding patronage within the United States foundered. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1927), 454, quoted in Tr (.)ĤThe tension between idealism and opportunism that was a persistent strain in Catlin’s character became more pronounced during the promotion of his Indian Gallery in London from 1840 to 1845. 8 The Diary of Philip Hone 1828-1851,Allan Nevins ed.Porter Papers, Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, as (.) ![]() ![]() Some dramatic entertainment to enhance educational objectives was in keeping with normative expectations of museums in America at that time. Catlin had visited Peale’s emporium and was aware of the competitive challenge of rival Indian galleries. Nevertheless, financial pressures and his sons’ persuasiveness led him to sacrifice strict classification for some crowd-pleasing spectacles, with scientific novelties and dinosaur bones interspersed with fat boys and waxwork horrors. In Philadelphia, in the early republic’s most esteemed museum, Charles Willson Peale intended to transform the traditional cabinet of amusing curiosities into a reputable institution promoting rational and scientific knowledge. Bank, “Archiving Culture: Performance and American Museums in the Earlier Nineteenth (.)ģRosemarie Bank has argued that nineteenth-century museums had no scrupulous demarcation between fact and fiction, and commonly exercised embellishment of fact by invention or exaggeration or stagecraft. But when patronage failed to meet his pressing financial needs, he resorted to exhibitions that combined authentic artefacts with dramatic re-enactments his publications numbered both elaborately hand-colored portfolios for wealthy connoisseurs and volumes that mixed good-quality pictorial illustrations and ethnographical description with humorous anecdote and autobiographical narrative. ![]() 3 His purpose, as he repeated many times, was to “impart useful instruction to those who are curious to learn the true character of the Indians.” 4ĢFor the remainder of his long life, he finished portraits and landscapes in the studio, produced numerous copies for sale, and decade after decade, lobbied Congress and appealed to wealthy benefactors for assistance. In his Gallery catalogue, he certified that “ every painting has been made from nature, BY MY OWN HAND,” and showed “ true and fac-simile traces of individual life and historical facts.” He took pains to establish his credentials as a true witness to verify his claims, he quoted pages of testimonials from the great and the good associated with the Indian question and displayed their signatures to authenticate his illustrations. He was scrupulous in recording the customs unique to the Plains tribes. White settlers were exterminating them, “yet, phoenix-like, they may rise from ‘the stain of the painter’s palette,’ and live again upon canvass, and stand forth for centuries to come, the living monuments of a noble race.” 2 To this end, he persevered with his field research: he devoted half-a-dozen years in the 1830s to sketching and painting “wild” “red men” in the Great Plains, and spent several more in South America in the 1850s. “I have flown to the rescue of their looks and their modes,” he pronounced from London in 1841. 1 Catlin had a grand design to record “doomed” Indian cultures for posterity. Brian Dippie has shown that the two roles were intimately connected.
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