For your consideration is "The Red Man's Bones George Catlin Artist Showman" by Benita Eisler. The first biography in over 60 years of a great American artist whose paintings are more famous than the man who made them. Considered the “first artist of the West,” only in the sense that he was the first to live among the Indians he painted, he achieved his most enduring fame as a painter of early 19th-century Indian tribes on the Upper Missouri and the Great Plains. His depictions and writings on the O-kee-pa—the Mandan torture-ritual rite of passage, in which young braves were skewered with splints through their flesh and strung up, bodily, high above the floor of a medicine lodge—was his most provocative and talked-about work. Benita Eisler’s new biography reveals a Catlin many might never have suspected existed: a fame-driven, footloose, anchor-less soul who was always ahead of his time—even when it came to his own demise. It brings to life a history of the Republic as well, in what might have been its most formative epoch. This is a rich and lively narrative of a complex, daring, uniquely talented American. Through her impeccable scholarship, Benita Eisler masterfully illuminates the tragic life of 19th Century artist George Catlin, America's forgotten portraitist of Native American life.
The book is in excellent near new condition, tight, dust jacket is clean. Pages are intact, no marring noted, measures 6.25"W x 9.5"L x 1.25"D