Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Tower, 1100 Miles above St. Louis
George Catlin, born Wilkes-Barre, PA 1796-died Jersey City, NJ 1872 · 1832
George Catlin described this scene as “a high and remarkable clay bluff, rising to the height of some hundreds of feet from the water, and having in distance, the castellated appearance of a fortification.” He painted this image in 1832 while on a lengthy voyage northwest on the Missouri River. Every bluff on the Upper Missouri reminded Catlin, a true student of the picturesque, of a castle, turret, or tower. (Catlin, Letters and Notes, vol. 2, no. 32, 1841, reprint 1973; Truettner, The Natural Man Observed, 1979)
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