Camanchee Horsemanship

Created between 1861 and 1869, the painting remained with George Catlin until his death in 1872. It then descended to his three daughters, Clara Gregory Catlin, Louise Catlin Kinney, and Elizabeth Wing Catlin. In 1912, the American Museum of Natural History in New York purchased the work from Elizabeth Wing Catlin as part of a larger acquisition of the Cartoon Collection. When the museum deaccessioned these works, Paul Mellon purchased over three hundred of them through Kennedy Galleries in 1959. Mellon subsequently gifted 351 paintings from the collection, including this one, to the National Gallery of Art in 1965. The painting has been included in several exhibitions, such as Catlin, Bodmer, Miller: Artist Explorers of the 1830s at the Joslyn Art Museum in 1967, A Gallery Revived at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in 1989, and Take Two: George Catlin Revisits the West at the Sid Richardson Museum in 2014. It was also placed on extended loan to the United States Embassy residences in Dublin from 1975 to 1978 and Damascus from 1982 to 1984.

During the mid-nineteenth century, George Catlin produced two major collections of Native American portraits, genre scenes, and western landscapes. His first collection, the Indian Gallery, comprised over five hundred works from the 1830s, with most survivors now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The Smithsonian holds a related 1834 to 1835 oil on canvas painting titled Comanche Feats of Horsemanship, which explores the same equestrian stratagem Catlin witnessed in Indian Territory. During the 1850s and 1860s, Catlin created his second major body of work, the Cartoon Collection, which numbered over six hundred works. Camanchee Horsemanship belongs to this later group, which Catlin exhibited in New York in 1871 alongside a published catalog detailing the subjects.

The subject of Comanche horsemanship depicted by Catlin found a notable place in contemporary popular culture through the 2019 HBO series Watchmen. The second episode, titled Martial Feats of Comanche Horsemanship, derives its name directly from Catlin's work. Within the narrative of the show, a version of the painting hangs prominently in the home of the Tulsa chief of police, Judd Crawford. According to in-universe annotated notes written by FBI Agent Dale Petey, the painting was given to Crawford by Senator Joe Keene, a character who authored the Keene Act banning unsanctioned costumed vigilantes, thereby linking the historical artwork to the fictional political framework of the series.