Long before the Rocky Mountains and Grand Canyon became tourist attractions, Niagara Falls was North America's most celebrated natural landmark. Catlin made several views of Niagara, and he exhibited a model of the falls with his Indian Gallery. Niagara Falls 1827-28 oil Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr. 1985.66.386,504    Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1796, George Catlin studied law before yielding to his passion for painting. In the 1820s he started as a miniaturist and landscape painter in Philadelphia, a city that then boasted America's most enlightened scientific and philosophical institutions. There, Charles Willson Peale's museum of art and natural history exemplified a picture gallery where art and science coexisted. The importance given to direct observation and experience greatly affected Catlin's future study of Plains Indians. A man of his times, Catlin became more than an artist; he was also an explorer, ethnologist, collector, geologist, cartographer, writer, and showman. Portrait of a Woman about 1825-30 oil Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David C. Morse 1984.139.1    This portrait's awkward homespun style helps explain Catlin's decision to go west. The artist moved from Philadelphia to New York in 1825, just as the city was becoming the capital of American commerce and art. Catlin couldn't measure up to the competition: a prominent New York critic, William Dunlap, labeled him "utterly incompetent." Catlin painted portraits in several other eastern cities, but they were little better. By 1828 he had resolved to try his luck in the West.