Elk and Buffalo Grazing among Prairie Flowers, Texas

About this artwork

During his travels through the western frontier, George Catlin saw the incredible numbers of buffalo that lived on the Plains. He called them “noble animals,” and understood that overhunting in the West would destroy them, “leaving these beautiful green fields a vast and idle waste.” He saw them “grazing on the plains of the country to which they appropriately belong.” “Their colour is a dark brown,” Catlin wrote, “but changing very much as the season varies from warm to cold; their hair or fur,...

Art Historical Context

George Catlin’s “Elk and Buffalo Grazing among Prairie Flowers, Texas” captures a vivid moment on the mid-nineteenth-century American Plains. Painted between 1846 and 1848, the work records the vast herds Catlin encountered during his travels across the western frontier. He described the animals as “noble” creatures perfectly suited to their environment, noting how their dark brown coats shifted with the seasons from light winter fur to sleek summer hide. The painting places elk and buffalo amid colorful prairie blooms, emphasizing both the abundance and the fragile balance of this landscape. Catlin was deeply aware of the threats facing these animals. He warned that overhunting would leave “these beautiful green fields a vast and idle waste,” a prescient observation made decades before the great buffalo herds were nearly extinguished. His paintings served as both artistic records and early calls for conservation, preserving the appearance of a region undergoing rapid change through westward expansion. As a pioneering documentarian of the American West, Catlin combined careful observation with a painter’s eye for color and movement. This work, now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, continues to offer viewers an intimate glimpse of a once-thriving ecosystem and the artist’s enduring respect for the natural world he witnessed.

About the Artist

George Catlin · 1796–1872

George Catlin (1796–1872), born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, to Putnam Catlin and Polly Sutton—who had been captured by Native Americans during the 1778 Battle of Wyoming—initially pursued a legal career. Trained at Litchfield Law School, he was admitted to the bar in 1819 but abandoned law after two years to study art in Philadelphia in 1823. Self-taught as a portraitist, Catlin quickly gained ...