Interior of an Amazon Forest - Zurumati

George Catlin created the oil painting Interior of an Amazon Forest - Zurumati in 1871. The work remained in the artist's possession until his death in 1872, after which it 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 piece from Elizabeth Wing Catlin.

The museum subsequently sold the painting in 1959 through Kennedy Galleries in New York to Paul Mellon of Upperville, Virginia. Mellon later gifted the work to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1965, where it remains part of the collection.

Interior of an Amazon Forest - Zurumati is held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Its accession number is 1965.11.1. The work entered the collection in 1965 as a gift from Mr. Paul Mellon. It was previously owned by George Catlin, then passed to his daughters Clara Gregory Catlin, Louise Catlin Kinney, and Elizabeth Wing Catlin.

In 1912 the painting was purchased from Elizabeth Wing Catlin by the American Museum of Natural History. It was sold in 1959 through Kennedy Galleries, New York, to Paul Mellon, and gifted to the National Gallery of Art in 1965.

Interior of an Amazon Forest - Zurumati has been recognized as an important early depiction of Amazonian vegetation in Western art and is held in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The painting entered the museum's collection in 1965 after being acquired from Paul Mellon, who obtained it in 1959 from Kennedy Galleries. Its provenance traces back to George Catlin, who painted it in 1871, and it remained in his family before being sold by his descendants. The work continues to be cited in discussions of 19th-century landscape painting and ecological representation.

Interior of an Amazon Forest – Zurumati is an oil painting executed on card that has been mounted on paperboard. The work measures a modest size and depicts a dense, imagined tropical interior dominated by a single, towering tree. Light filters through a canopy of foliage in bright, linear shafts, suggesting a humid, still atmosphere within the forest.

Catlin employed a heavy impasto application, building up thick layers of green pigment to give the foliage a tactile, three‑dimensional quality. The oil on card surface allows for vigorous brushwork, while the mounting on paperboard provides a stable backing for the relatively delicate support.

During the mid‑19th century, American artists often catered to public curiosity about distant regions, blending observation with imagination. Catlin’s shift from his documented field studies of Indigenous peoples to a speculative tropical landscape reflects broader trends of romanticizing the unknown in visual culture of the period.