Portage Around the Falls of Niagara at Table Rock

Executed in oil on canvas, the painting employs a palette dominated by turquoise, white, brown, and muted green. Catlin's brushwork varies across the composition, featuring relatively smooth application in the sky and water, contrasted by thicker texture in the rendering of snow and rising mist. Light is diffused throughout the scene, lacking strong shadows, which effectively suggests the overcast atmosphere of a winter day. The painting is signed in the lower right corner with the inscription G. Catlin. p.

Created in 1847 or 1848, 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 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 more than 300 of them through Kennedy Galleries in New York in 1959. Mellon subsequently gifted 351 paintings from this group, including this piece, to the National Gallery of Art in 1965. The painting has an extensive exhibition history, including displays in St. Louis, Peoria, Fort Worth, Nashville, Washington D.C., Buffalo, and internationally in Bonn and Berlin for the 2013 exhibition On the Trails of the Iroquois.

George Catlin was a 19th century American traveler, writer, and painter of the Romantic period who specialized in portraits and scenes of Native Americans. He created two major collections during his career. The first, known as the Indian Gallery, included more than 500 works completed during the 1830s, most of which survive at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. After financial difficulties forced him to sell his initial collection to industrialist Joseph Harrison, Catlin spent the next twenty years forming his second body of work, the Cartoon Collection, to which this painting belongs. Catlin exhibited the Cartoon Collection in New York in 1871 and published a catalog listing all the works, including this specific painting as Cart. No. 424. His broader oeuvre, including earlier views of Niagara Falls and a physical model of the falls exhibited with his Indian Gallery, sought to document the customs of tribes during a period marked by westward expansion and displacement.

Catlin's paintings, including this portage scene, have sparked ongoing scholarly discussion regarding the complexities of representation. While the artist expressed admiration for the people he depicted, noting he uniformly found them kind and honest, modern curatorial assessment highlights how his work often generalized and essentialized diverse cultures. The painting contributes to a historical visual record while simultaneously prompting contemporary viewers to contemplate how artists can perpetuate or challenge stereotypes. The survival of the Cartoon Collection through the stewardship of the American Museum of Natural History and Paul Mellon has allowed continued public engagement and critical reevaluation of Catlin's constructed narratives about Indigenous identity.