Slide 1 Slide 2 Slide 3

In the 1840s the works of George Catlin, Seth Eastman, and John Mix Stanley captivated East Coast audiences. These enterprising artists, who spent years among their subjects, sustained themselves through exhibition and publication of their views of Indian and frontier life. Their influence on other artists was enormous. Catlin, Eastman, and Stanley were all careful recorders of the peoples they encountered. Nevertheless, these artists played up to their audiences, who relished Indians and trappers as peculiarly exotic, by favoring especially colorful and dramatic subjects.