Description
A single ochre stripe crosses the cheek of the sitter in this portrait, catching the eye before anything else in the composition settles into focus. From that one deliberate mark, the rest of the image opens outward, and the picture reveals itself as a study in quiet attentiveness rather than spectacle.
About Te Ah Ke Ra Lee Re Coo Catlin Reproduction
Te ah ke ra lee re coo, The Cheyenne, a Republican Pawnee belongs to the body of portraits George Catlin made among the Plains nations during his travels of the 1830s, a period when he worked with unusual speed and directness to record faces and dress before, as he believed, they might vanish from view. The sitter is presented against a plain ground, so that nothing competes with the face, the ornament, and the particular set of the shoulders. Catlin worked with a limited palette of earth tones warmed by touches of red and gold, and his brush moves with the economy of an artist working on location rather than in a studio at leisure.
The construction of the image rewards a slow look. Catlin balances a few passages of close attention, the eyes, the paint on the skin, a detail of ornament, against broader, more loosely handled areas that let the eye rest before returning to the focal point. This alternation of density and calm is characteristic of his working method, and it gives even a modestly scaled portrait a sense of presence disproportionate to its size.
The ByMuseum version of this work is painted, not printed. A trained artist reproduces the picture by hand in oil on artist-grade canvas, matching the palette of Catlin stroke by stroke and preserving the texture that separates a hand-painted oil painting reproduction from any mechanical copy. Held at an angle to the light, the surface shows the same ridges of pigment a viewer would find standing before an original oil, which is part of what makes a hand-painted replica of this kind a different object entirely from a flat print.
The hand-painted reproduction
This is a picture suited to a collector drawn to the ethnographic portraiture of the American frontier, or to a study or reading room where a single arresting face can be given room to hold its own on the wall.
- Hand-painted oil reproduction on artist-grade canvas
- Available in a range of sizes to suit your wall
- Arrives gallery-ready for immediate display
- Certificate of authenticity included with every order
- 90 day returns, full refund or free replacement, no restocking fee