George Catlin

George Catlin (July 26, 1796 – December 23, 1872) was an American lawyer, painter, author, and traveler, who specialized in portraits of Native Americans in the American frontier. Traveling to the American West five times during the 1830s, Catlin wrote about and painted portraits that depicted the life of the Plains Indians. His early work included engravings, drawn from nature, of sites along the route of the Erie Canal in New York State. Several of his renderings were published in one of the first printed books to use lithography, Cadwallader D. Colden's Memoir, Prepared at the Request of a Committee of the Common Council of the City of New York, and Presented to the Mayor of the City, at the Celebration of the Completion of the New York Canals, published in 1825, with early images of the City of Buffalo. Early life and education Catlin was born in 1796 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. While growing up, George encountered "trappers, hunters, explorers and settlers who stayed with his family on their travels west." Catlin was also intrigued by stories told to him by his mother, Polly Sutton, who had been captured by Indians during the 1778 Battle of Wyoming in Pennsylvania. Like his father, Catlin trained at Litchfield Law School when he was 17, although he disliked the field of law. He was admitted to the Bar in 1819 and practiced law for two years before giving it up to travel and study art.