American Art Collaborative

George Catlin often adopted an aerial vantage point for his landscapes. During his Missouri River voyage of 1832, Catlin stretched out “in the grass on a favourite bluff” and envisioned the world from above: “I was lifted up upon an imaginary pair of wings, which . . . held me floating in the open air, from whence I could behold beneath me the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans---the great cities of the East, and the mighty rivers.