John Mix Stanley (1814 - 1872). John Mix Stanley was an artist-explorer, an American painter of landscapes, and Native American portraits and tribal life. Born in the Finger Lakes region of New York, he started painting signs and portraits as a young man. In 1842 he traveled to the American West to paint Native American life. In 1846 he exhibited a gallery of 85 of his paintings in Cincinnati and Louisville. During the Mexican-American War, he joined Colonel Stephen Watts Kearney's expedition to California and painted accounts of the campaign, as well as aspects of the Oregon Territory. Stanley continued to travel and paint in the West, and mounted a major exhibit of more than 150 works at the Smithsonian Institution in 1852. Although he had some Congressional interest in purchasing the collection, he was unsuccessful in completing a sale to the government. He never recovered his expenses for a decade of intensive work and travel. In 1854 he exhibited a 42-scene panorama of western scenes in Washington, DC: Baltimore, New York and London, but it has been lost. More than 200 of his paintings, maps and other work being held at the Smithsonian were lost in an 1865 fire. The irreparable loss of most of his works caused the eclipse of Stanley's reputation for some time in American art history. His appreciation and portrayal of the American West is valued, and today his few surviving works are held by national and numerous regional museums. John Mix Stanley was born in Canandaigua, New York to Seth and Sally Stanley. He was orphaned at the age of 12. At age 14, Stanley was`apprenticed to a coach maker. He taught himself painting skills, and at the age of 20 moved to Detroit, the largest city in the Michigan Territory, and started doing itinerant work. Stanley moved to what was considered the frontier town of Detroit in 1832, where he became an itinerant painter of signs and portraits. He traveled also to Fort Snelling, Galena and Chicago. In the latter part of the decade, he returned East, apparently to Washington, D.C., where he briefly had a studio. In 1842, accompanied by Sumner Dickerman of Troy, New York as an assistant, Stanley went to the American Southwest expressly to paint Native Americans, perhaps inspired by the work of the artist George Catlin. They settled at Fort Gibson in Indian Territory; the community was a crossroads of many Indian nations. In the summer of 1843, Stanley went to the council at Tahlequah called by the Cherokee chief John Ross and the Republic of Texas. An estimated 10,000 Native Americans of 17 tribes attended to negotiate peace with Texas, as did many European Americans. Stanley spent four weeks there and worked intensely through the next three months to complete his numerous paintings of individuals and tribal groups. He also spent more time with Cherokee and Creek groups, painting portraits. That fall he accompanied the party of the US Indian agent Pierce M. Butler to a council with Comanche and other Plains Indians, probably in southwest Oklahoma near present-day Texas. In early 1846 in Cincinnati, Ohio, he and Dickerman exhibited a gallery of 85 paintings of Indians, which received favorable reviews there and in Louisville, Kentucky. Stanley left Dickerman in charge and returned to the West. At the outbreak of the Mexican War in 1846, Stanley was appointed a draftsman for the Corps of Topographical Engineers to Colonel Stephen Watts Kearney's expedition to California and the Oregon Territory. He produced many sketches and paintings of the campaign, making more finished paintings after reaching San Francisco in early 1847. Some works were reproduced as engravings. He traveled further north to the Oregon and Washington territories to paint landscapes and various Native American tribes, and worked through part of 1848. That year Stanley traveled to Hawaii, where he spent nearly twelve months painting portraits of King Kamehameha III, his wife, and the royal family. After his return to the East, he organized his large gallery of Indian portraits and paintings to be mounted in several cities, including New York. In 1852 he gained a major exhibit in Washington, DC at the Smithsonian Institution of his Native American Gallery, which attracted much attention in the city. As he noted in the preface to the catalogue published by the Smithsonian, Stanley portrayed 43 tribes. His paintings represented a decade of work, with extensive travel in the West and the Hawaiian Islands. His collection numbered nearly 200 works and was celebrated at the time. Seth Eastman, also an artist of Native American life, wrote to Stanley of his gallery: that I consider the artistic merits of yours far superior to Mr. Catlin's; and they give a better idea of the Indian than any works in Mr. Catlin's collection.