A Small Village of Remos Indians

The palette favors muted greens and earth tones, punctuated by touches of brighter pigment in costume and sky, producing a restrained yet descriptive effect.

Executed in oil on a card support mounted to paperboard, the work measures 47.2 × 63 cm. The handling is smooth and controlled, typical of Catlin’s later oils, with careful layering to render foliage and sky. Stylistically, the composition presents a generalized Indigenous settlement beneath a broad, flat horizon, arranged in a picturesque formula that balances vertical tree trunks against horizontal ground and sky. The palette favors muted greens and earth tones, punctuated by touches of brighter pigment in costume and sky, producing a restrained yet descriptive effect.

Painted in 1867, A Small Village of Remos Indians was executed by George Catlin late in his career as part of his ongoing documentation of Indigenous life.

The work descended within Catlin’s family to his daughters, Clara Gregory Catlin, Louise Catlin Kinney, and Elizabeth Wing Catlin, before being sold in 1912 to the American Museum of Natural History. In 1959 it was acquired through Kennedy Galleries, New York, by Paul Mellon and subsequently gifted by him to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in 1965.

The painting is held by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Its accession number is 1965.18.1. The work entered the collection in 1965 as a gift from Paul Mellon, who had acquired it in 1959 through Kennedy Galleries, New York, from the American Museum of Natural History, where it had been purchased in 1912 from Elizabeth Wing Catlin, a daughter of the artist.

The painting has no recorded exhibition history in the provided sources.

George Catlin's A Small Village of Remos Indians, painted in 1862, offers a glimpse into Native American life through a landscape composition. Executed in oil on card and mounted on paperboard, this work reflects Catlin's extensive efforts to document Indigenous cultures across the American frontier. The painting features a cluster of dwellings with smoke rising, set against a backdrop of trees, emphasizing the natural environment.