George Catlin, The White Cloud, chief of the Iowas, 1845 by Atelier Liesjes

About "George Catlin, The White Cloud, chief of the Iowas, 1845"

by Atelier Liesjes

About the artwork

Leader of a group of Native Americans from what is now the United States wearing an ornament and chain of bones.

This vertical portrait shows the head, shoulders and chest of a brown-skinned Native American man from Iowa, whose face is mainly painted red and green. His body and face are facing to the right and he looks into the distance with dark eyes. Crimson paint covers his forehead, the sides of his cheeks and neck. Four parallel lines of pine green run up his right cheek, to our left, like the four fingers of a hand. A green line on the other cheek could be the thumb and the palm could have left the green stain on his chin. The man's nose and cheeks near the nose are unpainted. His pointed headgear is decorated with two feathers and held in place by a wide band of dark fur that wraps across his forehead and around the back of his head. Earrings hang from the lobes and tops of his ears and he wears a necklace of bear claws, beads and shells, including an oval-shaped, medallion-like shell at his throat. His garment is made of white fur and what appears to be brown animal skin. Brown clouds form a screen over an icy blue sky in the background.

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.