Wah-ro-née-sah, the Surrounder, Chief of the Tribe. (Chief of the Ottoes, #117)

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: George Catlin, 1832. Watercolor. Watercolor over graphite, heightened with white gouache on cream wove paper, inscribed "Chief of the Ottoes" in the bottom right-hand corner, and numbered "117" in the top right-hand corner. Image: (9 5/8 x 6 3/8 inches). Framed: (18 x 14 1/2 inches). An early, previously unrecorded watercolor study of a Native American chief for a George Catlin oil painting now held in the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian.

"[I] painted thus many of my pictures in water colors during my 8 years travels, and most, though not all of them, I enlarged onto canvas, wishing my collection to be all in oil painting." - George Catlin During the 1830s, Catlin, a self-taught artist from Philadelphia, traveled through the Great Plains of the American West, absorbing the ways of the Native American tribes he found flourishing there. Over the next decade, Catlin embarked on a journey to create a faithful visual study of the members, customs, and surroundings of the tribes who welcomed him, which culminated in his print publications of North American Indian life. Troccoli suggests that Catlin traveled with a sketchbook in which he made preliminary watercolor studies of his subjects, which he later mounted and finished. The finished paintings that Catlin produced following these trips were exhibited in his Indian Gallery, where he hoped to share the nobility of Native Americans and their cultures, as well as convey the devastating impact the Indian Removal Act of 1830 had on many of the tribes. Catlin described Wah-ro-née-sah as "quite an old man; his shirt made of the skin of a grizzly bear, with the claws on." The Surrounder was Chief of the Ottoe tribe, and lived in a spacious timber lodge perched on a ridge overlooking the Platte River. His bear claw necklace suggests he was a member of the Bear Clan, which shared leadership of the Ottoes with the Buffalo Clan. Another Catlin watercolor of Wah-ro-née-sah is held in the Gilcrease Museum's collection, but it dates from the early 1840s and is much smaller than the present "cabinet picture." The Gilcrease variant was likely painted after the present work, and intended to be used as a model for an illustration. Other examples of Catlin's watercolors held in the Gilcrease collection are more suitable comparisons, particularly the earlier portraits associated with Catlin's visit to the tribes living around Cantonment Leavenworth in 1830. These portraits all share the same careful modeling of the heads with wash laid over graphite underdrawing, alongside a much looser execution of the torsos. Catlin produced a fully realized oil painting after the present watercolor study of Wah-ro-née-sah, which is now held in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The larger oil painting is a faithful translation of the watercolor, if lacking its immediacy. An aquatint engraving by J. Harris after the present Catlin study, held by the New York Public Library and Harvard among other institutions, was executed for James Cowles Prichard's Natural History of Man, (London and New York:1855) and is Plate LIII in that book. The provenance of this watercolor is of especial historical import. Captain William Henry Shippard, who Catlin describes in his Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe, as "my best of friends," acquired the present watercolor study, among others of Catlin's works, directly from the artist in the 1840s. Their relationship is well documented by written correspondence. Shippard, an English army officer and expert on Mexican antiquities, had a short-lived Museum of History in London, which Catlin praised in his book. Shippard worked on behalf of Catlin in attempts to sell his collection of Native American paintings and to exhibit his work in the UK. Shippard also assisted Catlin in his research at the British Museum. The present watercolor passed by descent through Shippard's family until it was auctioned in 2019 when it was sold for $145,214.

Catlin, A Descriptive Catalogue of Catlin's Indian Gallery, no.117, p.16. Catlin, Catlin's Notes of Eight Years' Travels and Residence in Europe, p.63. Gurney and Heyman, George Catlin and His Indian Gallery, p.126. Prichard, Natural History of Man, Plate LIII, p.547. Troccoli, First Artist of the West: George Catlin Paintings and Watercolors from the Collection of the Gilcrease Museum, p.20. Truettner, The Natural Man Observed, p.131.