Seneca Chief, Red Jacket, with Two Warriors

The painting is executed in oil on card mounted on paperboard, a support characteristic of Catlin's Cartoon Collection works. The visual handling features smooth, detailed brushwork with a polished finish. The composition is symmetrical and frontal, with the three figures arranged within an oval frame against a pale blue sky with soft clouds, a distant body of water, and low green vegetation. The palette relies on warm earth tones, ochres, and muted greens. Shadows fall gently to the right, and the ground beneath the figures is dry and grassy. The work bears a paper label numbered "53" at the top center of the surrounding tan and green border, and "A 215" stamped in the lower left corner, reflecting its place in Catlin's systematic cataloging of the Cartoon Collection.

The painting was created by George Catlin (1796-1872) as part of his Cartoon Collection. Following Catlin's death, the work descended to his 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. The museum later deaccessioned it, and in 1959 it was sold through Kennedy Galleries in New York to Paul Mellon of Upperville, Virginia. Mellon gifted the painting to the National Gallery of Art in 1965, where it entered the collection with accession number 1965.16.104. The work was exhibited in 1982-1984 as an extended loan for use by the Ambassador at the U.S. Embassy residence in Damascus, Syria, and in 1988 it appeared in "George Catlin: An American View" at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo.

George Catlin produced two major collections of paintings documenting Native American life. The first, his "Indian Gallery" of more than 500 works from the 1830s, is now largely at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The second, the "Cartoon Collection" of more than 600 works from the 1850s and 1860s, was acquired by the American Museum of Natural History in 1912. Paul Mellon's purchase of more than 300 deaccessioned works from this collection, and his subsequent 1965 gift of 351 works to the National Gallery of Art, fundamentally reshaped the institutional presence of Catlin's later period. The painting's subject, Red Jacket, was a pivotal figure in Seneca and Iroquois history: a signatory to the Treaty of Canandaigua in 1794, an opponent of missionary activity and cultural assimilation, and a renowned orator who believed Seneca freedom depended on maintaining traditional culture. Catlin's 1871 catalog entry for this work cites William L. Stone's "Life of Red Jacket," indicating the artist's engagement with existing biographical literature. The dating of the painting to 1861, or the range 1861/1869, places it decades after Red Jacket's death in 1830, meaning Catlin worked from earlier sources or memory rather than from life.

The painting has been reproduced in multiple editions of the National Gallery of Art's catalog of American paintings, appearing in 1970, 1980, and 1992. Its inclusion in these authoritative publications has secured its place in the scholarly record of American portraiture. The work also appears in the Catalog of American Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, which documents it under the credit line of the National Gallery of Art. The repatriation of Red Jacket's actual peace medal in 2021 to the Seneca Nation and the Onöhsagwë:De' Cultural Center has renewed attention to representations of the chief, though the painting itself remains in the National Gallery of Art collection. As part of the Cartoon Collection, the work contributes to understanding Catlin's sustained project of documenting Native American subjects across decades, even as his practice shifted from direct observation to studio-based repetition and reinvention.