A Fragile Pamphlet Recording the 1845 Paris Exhibition of George Catlin's Paintings and his Performing Native American Entourage

NOTICE SUR LES INDIENS IOWAYS.

(AMERICANA - 19TH CENTURY NATIVE AMERICAN EXHIBITIONS). [CATLIN, GEORGE]. MELODY, GEORGE H. C.

(Paris: Imprimerie de Wittersheim, 1845). 182 x 120 mm. (7 1/8 x 4 3/4"). 24 pp.

Original tan printed wrappers (with several small, expert repairs to back), stitched as issued. Housed in a tan paper-covered chemise with black morocco label and gilt lettering and matching slipcase. With eight wood-engraved plates by Porret after George Catlin. Sabin 47467; Howes 500. Some harmless fraying along bottom edge of wrapper, covers just a little soiled, text a bit toned and lightly foxed, two small open tears to last two leaves, but the important illustrations (printed on a better quality of paper) bright and pleasing. With some inevitable defects, given what it is, but still an excellent copy of a fragile pamphlet.

This is a well-preserved copy of the fragile and uncommonly seen brochure recording the famous mid-19th century Paris performances of Ioway Indians and George Catlin's celebrated Native American portraits, a visit that caused a sensation among Parisians. Catlin (1796-1872) walked away from a Pennsylvania law practice at age 25 in order to pursue his dream of becoming an artist. He achieved some success as a portrait painter but found the work dull. After seeing a delegation of Native American leaders from the Western states in Philadelphia (and perhaps being influenced by the fact that his mother had been captured for a time by the Indians in 1778), he decided to dedicate himself to memorializing those tribes whose traditional way of life was being destroyed. He travelled throughout the American interior, where he met and painted people from many indigenous groups, making an effort to depict realistically their traditional ways of life. ANB says that his paintings "show people, not romantic stereotypes, and the ethnographic value of his work has only appreciated with the passage of time." He staged exhibitions of his work in the United States, then worked with promoter George H. C. Melody to take his exhibition across the Atlantic to tour Europe. They were accompanied by Chief Francis White Cloud (d. 1859) and 11 other members of the Iowa (or Ioway) tribe, along with translator Jeffrey Deroine (also Doraway, 1806-59), a formerly enslaved African American who had been raised near the Iowa and leveraged his language skills into a successful career as a diplomat and interpreter. Arriving in Paris in 1845, the exotic entourage, which featured Catlin's paintings alongside performances by the Iowa contingent, was an enormous success, impressing a great many visitors, including, among the famous, Charles Baudelaire, Benjamin Disraeli, Victor Hugo, and George Sand. The present pamphlet, produced as a record of the visit, includes eight reproductions of Catlin's paintings, along with a description of the Native American visitors, an account of their meeting with King Louis-Phillipe, and ethnographic excerpts from the Office of Indian Affairs. This work infrequently appears on the market: we could trace only two copies at auction since 1966. Our copy, with the delicate wrappers largely intact and retaining its original stitching, is especially desirable. (ST21010)

Price: $6,900.00