Catlin, George

Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio. Hunting Scenes and Amusements of the Rocky Mountains and Prairies of America. From Drawings and Notes of the Author, made during Eight Years' Travel amongst Forty-Eight of the Wildest and Most Remote Tribes of Savages in North America. New York: James Ackerman (R. Craighead, printer), 1845



Broadsheets (22 x 15 1/4 in.; 557 x 387 mm). 25 very fine handcolored lithographed plates after Catlin by James Ackerman, printed on heavy paper, letterpress title-page, preface leaf, and six leaves of text; title-page lightly foxed, 3 or 4 plates lightly toned or with some marginal soiling. Publisher's half brown diced morocco over maroon cloth, large gilt-lettered label on front cover, yellow-coated endpapers, red-sprinkled edges; extremities a bit worn, hinges reinforced with cloth tape, front cover faded to brown.

Siday Hawes (gift label mounted on front pastedown, "Siday Hawes from his friend Jesse Oakley") — "A Lady" (Christie's, 18 December 2003, lot 201)

Howes C243; Bennett 22; McCracken 10A; Reese, "The Production of Catlin's North American Indian Portfolio, 1844–1976"  issue II:6; Reese, American Color Plate Books 25; Sabin 11532 note; Wagner-Camp 105a:3

First American edition, first issue, with exceptionally clean and bright plates. "This New York 1845 edition was pirated from the English original, evidently without Catlin's knowledge or consent. Not only did the publisher and lithographer, James Ackerman, undersell the author's own edition; he had the cheek to write a preface which criticized Catlin for not publishing the work in the United States, followed by a manifesto proclaiming the ability of American craftsmen to equal the quality of Old World productions" (Reese).

Like the London original on which it was based, the American Portfolio was available with the plates colored, tinted, or colored and mounted on card. The Ackerman edition is much scarcer than the London issues: Reese located only thirteen copies of all three New York issues. To many eyes, the American Portfolio is also more attractive than its English predecessor; generations of bibliographers, from Whitman Bennet to William Reese, have described the coloring of the Ackerman plates simply as "superb."