John Mix Stanley

1814-1872

John Mix Stanley (1814–1872) was an American painter who devoted his career to recording Native American life and the landscapes of the American West. Orphaned young and largely self-taught, he began as an itinerant sign and portrait painter out of Detroit before heading, in 1842, to Indian Territory to paint tribal portraits, inspired by George Catlin. He worked among the Cherokee, Creek, Comanche and other peoples, exhibited his growing gallery in Cincinnati and Louisville, then served as a draftsman on Kearny's expedition during the Mexican–American War, recording California and Oregon. In 1848 he spent nearly a year in Hawaii painting King Kamehameha III and the royal family. His nearly 200-work Native American Gallery was shown at the Smithsonian in 1852, and he later joined Isaac Stevens's railroad survey to the Pacific Northwest. Settling permanently in Detroit in 1864, he helped found what became the Detroit Institute of Arts. Most of his life's work burned in the 1865 Smithsonian fire, leaving only scattered survivors in museum collections today.