Courbet, Catlin, and the Exploitation of Native Americans

Abstract

This essay interrogates connections between Gustave Courbet’s The Painter’s Studio (1855; Musée d’Orsay) and the visual culture of American Indian performance in Paris. The article builds evidence from visual analysis and from reviews of George Catlin’s American Indian Gallery (Paris, 1845) written by George Sand, Charles Baudelaire and others. The article speculates on the resonance between Courbet’s disenfranchised figures and colonial realities implied by Catlin’s display. It also connects reactions to Catlin’s museum with the burgeoning of modernism in mid-nineteenth-century France and with the transformation in Courbet’s painting during the years marked by The Painter’s Studio.

Keywords

• George Catlin
• Gustave Courbet
• Iowa
• Ojibwa
• Native American performance
• George Sand