In November 1839, Catlin sailed for England in hopes of generating increased receipts and perhaps selling his Indian Gallery to a wealthy aristocrat. Neither happened in the thirty years he spent abroad. To bolster his income Catlin copied works in the Indian Gallery in oil, watercolor, and pencil to sell to wealthy collectors, such as Sir Thomas Phillipps and King Louis Philippe of France. More than mere duplicates, some copies are more ambitious in detail and finish-as perhaps dictated by European tastes-than their original versions sketched in the 1830s. Scalp Dance, Sioux 1845-48 Western Sioux/Lakota oil Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr. 1985.66.438b Catlin received a commission from King Louis Philippe, who had spent two years in the late 1790s in the United States, to paint fifteen large canvases. Inspired, perhaps, by the art he saw in French museums, Catlin produced the most carefully detailed and highly finished works of his career. Here, he turned a rudimentary composition sketched at Fort Pierre in 1832 into a full-blown and dramatically illuminated spectacle.