View of the Lower Mississippi

The painting is executed in oil on card mounted on paperboard, a support characteristic of Catlin's Cartoon Collection works. The brushwork appears smooth and controlled, with careful detailing in the trees and more generalized treatment of the cliff face and water. The palette is dominated by dark greens, browns, and muted earth tones, with touches of red on the figures providing contrast. Light seems diffuse, with no strong shadows, creating an even, somewhat flat illumination across the composition. The forest consists of tall, slender trunks with feathery foliage in deep greens, with one lighter, more detailed tree leaning prominently at center right. The wide, pale greenish border surrounding the image contains a paper label marked "311" at top center and "A 386" stamped at lower left, indicating the work's place within Catlin's own inventory and classification systems. This border treatment and the work's relatively small scale distinguish it from the more finished paintings of Catlin's earlier Indian Gallery.

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 a substantial portion of the surviving Cartoon Collection. The museum deaccessioned the work in 1959, selling it through Kennedy Galleries in New York to Paul Mellon of Upperville, Virginia. Mellon, a major collector of American art, subsequently gave it to the National Gallery of Art in 1965, where it received accession number 1965.16.209. The work has been exhibited publicly on several notable occasions. From 1966 to 1968, it toured with the Arkansas Artmobile state-wide program organized by the Department of Education, State of Arkansas, with display at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock. From 1982 to 2006, it was on extended loan for use by The White House in Washington, D.C.

George Catlin (1796-1872) was born in Pennsylvania and was largely self-taught as a painter. He spent 1830 to 1836 traveling extensively in the American West, producing 470 portraits and portrayals of Indian life representing almost forty different tribes. His most productive year was 1832, when he traveled up the Missouri River aboard the American Fur Company's steamboat Yellowstone, painting the Assiniboin, Blackfoot, Crow, Plains Ojibwa, Cree, Hidatsa, and Mandan. This first collection, known as the Indian Gallery, included more than 500 works completed during the 1830s; most surviving examples are now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. During the 1850s and 1860s, Catlin created a second collection of more than 600 works, the Cartoon Collection, characterized by smaller-scale works on card and paperboard often with documentary captions. The National Gallery of Art now holds 351 works from this collection, acquired through Paul Mellon's 1965 gift. When Catlin exhibited the Cartoon Collection in New York in 1871, he published a catalog with descriptive entries for each work, a practice that has provided scholars with invaluable primary documentation.

View of the Lower Mississippi occupies a significant place within the historiography of American western art as a product of Catlin's systematic effort to document the landscapes and peoples of the American interior. The Cartoon Collection, though initially created as a more commercially accessible format than the Indian Gallery, has proven essential to understanding Catlin's artistic development and the evolution of American landscape painting in the mid-nineteenth century. The work's presence in major institutional collections, first the American Museum of Natural History and then the National Gallery of Art, reflects shifting institutional priorities in the preservation and display of American art. Its extended loan to The White House from 1982 to 2006 indicates its status as a representative American landscape during a period of heightened cultural diplomacy. 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 publications, ensuring its continued visibility in scholarly literature.