Facsimile of a Mandan Robe

George Catlin executed this oil on card work in 1865. Upon the artist's death in 1872, the piece passed by descent to his daughters: Clara Gregory Catlin, Louise Catlin Kinney, and Elizabeth Wing Catlin. In 1912, the American Museum of Natural History purchased the painting directly from Elizabeth Wing Catlin.

The museum retained the work until 1959, when it was sold through Kennedy Galleries of New York to Paul Mellon of Upperville, Virginia. Mellon subsequently donated the facsimile to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1965, where it remains part of the permanent collection.

The work was painted in 1865 by George Catlin, a frontier artist known for documenting Indigenous cultures of North America. Its depiction of a Mandan robe reflects 19th-century ethnographic interests and Catlin's broader mission to preserve visual records of Native peoples before perceived cultural disappearance. The painting entered the National Gallery of Art collection in 1965 via a gift from Paul Mellon, building on its earlier ownership history that included George Catlin, his daughters, and the American Museum of Natural History.

Created in 1865, the work titled Facsimile of a Mandan Robe is an oil painting executed on a card that has been adhered to a paperboard support. It belongs to the tradition of American folk art and presents a stylized representation of a ceremonial garment associated with the Mandan people of the Northern Plains.