Two Blackfoot Warriors and a Woman

The medium is oil on card mounted on paperboard, a support characteristic of the Cartoon Collection works. The painting exhibits a soft, sketchy quality with visible paper texture and muted watercolor-like washes, despite being executed in oil. This distinctive handling, looser than the more finished works of the Indian Gallery, reflects the working method Catlin employed for this second series. The tan border surrounding the image, the small red octagonal stamp at top center, and the inscription "A/118" at lower left are consistent features of the Cartoon Collection's presentation format. The relatively small scale, 46.7 by 61.5 centimeters, and the portable card support suggest these works were conceived as a coherent portable archive rather than individual gallery paintings.

The painting remained in Catlin's possession until his death in 1872, then 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, acquiring the bulk of the surviving Cartoon Collection. When the museum deaccessioned these works, Paul Mellon of Upperville, Virginia, purchased this painting in 1959 through Kennedy Galleries, New York. Mellon gave it to the National Gallery of Art in 1965, where it bears accession number 1965.16.27. The work was exhibited at the Whitney Gallery of Western Art, Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming, from 1964 to 1974, and from 1981 to 2017 was on extended loan for use by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor at the Supreme Court of the United States, with temporary returns to the NGA.

Catlin's two collections represent distinct phases of his documentary enterprise. The Indian Gallery, more than 500 works from the 1830s, was painted from direct observation during his western travels; most surviving examples are now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The Cartoon Collection, created in the 1850s and 1860s largely in Europe and the eastern United States, comprised more than 600 works that revisited earlier subjects, often from memory, sketches, and earlier paintings. When Catlin exhibited the Cartoon Collection in New York in 1871, he published a catalog with descriptive entries for each work, providing the identifications and narrative details that survive for this painting. The National Gallery of Art's holding of 351 Cartoon Collection works, acquired through Paul Mellon's 1965 gift, constitutes the largest repository of this second series and enables scholarly assessment of Catlin's later working methods.

The painting's extended display at the Supreme Court from 1981 to 2017, in the chambers of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on that body, lent it a public visibility beyond typical museum exhibition. This placement reflected both the work's portable scale and its symbolic resonance as a document of American cultural encounter. Within Catlin scholarship, the Cartoon Collection has historically been evaluated against the Indian Gallery, with debates about the relative authority of firsthand versus remembered observation. The work has been reproduced in successive National Gallery catalogues in 1970, 1980, and 1992, ensuring its place in the institutional record of American painting. As part of the Mellon gift, it contributes to one of the most significant concentrations of Catlin's later production available for study.