George Catlin, See-non-ty-a, a medicine man from Iowa, 1845 by Atelier Liesjes

From the chest up, a brown-skinned man in native Iowa clothing can be seen looking just to our left with heavy eyelids on this vertical portrait painting. He faces us against a background with patches of pale turquoise and creamy white. The sides of the man's square face, the top of his bald head and his neck are painted bright orange-red. His ears, lips and eyelids are also red. Deep lines run across his forehead and under his high cheekbones, on either side of his nose and closed mouth. His pointed headdress fans out like a fountain around a small cap at the centre of the top of his head. Beaded earrings hang from the earlobes and tops of his ears. More than a dozen chains, perhaps from pins, hang below two shorter chokers, one with a wide oval shell over a round shell or medallion. Green stripes on his bare shoulders and chest form a shallow V across his chest and there is a red handprint on his upper right arm, to our left. His torso and one shoulder are wrapped in bright red fabric.

Catlin's paintings paint a unique and often impressive picture of the lives of Indian tribes, and the appearance of their chiefs from a period of American history when influences of European civilisation had yet to make themselves felt in the steppe regions of North America.

George Catlin (Wilkes-Barre, 26 July 1796 - Jersey City, 23 December 1872) was an American painter, writer and traveller who specialised in making portraits of Indians in North and Central America.