Mandan War Chief with His Favorite Wife

Catlin executed this work in oil on card mounted on paperboard, a technique characteristic of his Cartoon Collection rather than the canvas supports of his earlier Indian Gallery. The composition is arranged across a shallow, open landscape under a pale, clouded sky, with sparse ground and gentle shadows falling to the right. The palette relies on soft earth tones, pale blues, and cream, punctuated by accents of red and yellow. The surface appears smooth, featuring careful linear detail that delineates the intricate costume elements and the pictographs on the painted hide. A dark green border frames the scene, and a small numbered label reading 30 appears at the top center, corresponding to the catalog entry. The lower left corner bears the inscription A 172, while the lower center is inscribed Catlin p.

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. When the museum deaccessioned the collection, Paul Mellon acquired the painting in 1959 through Kennedy Galleries in New York. Mellon gifted the work to the National Gallery of Art in 1965. It has been exhibited widely, including long-term loans to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, from 1964 to 1974 and 1976 to 1983, and exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum in 1981, the New Orleans Museum of Art in 2003, and the Sid Richardson Museum in 2014.

This painting is a product of Catlin's Cartoon Collection, his second major body of work depicting Native American life, created during the 1850s and 1860s. This later series of over 600 works followed his original Indian Gallery of the 1830s, which comprised more than 500 paintings and is now largely housed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. When Catlin exhibited the Cartoon Collection in New York in 1871, he published a catalog that provided additional context for the subjects, identifying the figures and explaining the significance of their attire and the battle records on the painted robe. The catalog entry for this work, listed as Cart. No. 30, offered contemporary viewers an interpretive guide to the Mandan subjects and their symbols of status and history.