About this work
*Buffalo Bull Grazing — No. 2* is a lithograph by George Catlin that distills the entire drama of the nineteenth-century American West into a single, solitary figure. A buffalo bull dominates the composition, portrayed in mid-graze against a backdrop of serene, rolling hills. His massive frame is rendered with careful attention to the thick, shaggy fur enveloping the head and forequarters — contrasting sharply with the smoother hide of his hindquarters — while his head bends slightly toward the ground, the animal's gaze directed forward with an air of calm alertness.
The palette conveys both raw power and environmental quietude: the greens and yellows of the open grass complement the darker tones of the bull's coat, and the muted hues of the landscape suggest a vast, open space stretching well beyond the frame. There is no action, no hunt, no human presence — just the animal and the prairie, rendered with the directness of a field study and the gravity of a monument.
Catlin made his original sketch on the Upper Missouri in 1832,
having secured a berth on the steamboat *Yellowstone* for a journey 2,000 miles upriver from St. Louis, where he watched great herds of buffalo, antelope, and elk roaming across a vast country of open green fields.
The lithograph version dates to 1844.
Catlin's project was largely fueled by the fear that American Indians, the great buffalo herds, and a way of life would one day vanish — and history proved him right. Buffalo were still plentiful when he made his westward expeditions, but within fifty years their numbers had dropped from millions to only a few hundred.
*Buffalo Bull, Grazing on the Prairie* — of which this lithograph is a companion image — epitomizes that vision: wild, iconic, and tragic at the same time.
The lithograph version now held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum arrived via transfer from the National Museum of Natural History, Department of Ethnology.
This is a print for rooms that earn their quietness — a study, a reading room, a space where dark wood and warm light do the talking. It asks nothing dramatic of the wall it occupies; instead it rewards a long look. The viewer who lingers will notice how completely Catlin resists the era's appetite for spectacle: no thundering herd, no heroic hunter. Catlin was one of the first artists of European descent to chronicle the massive herds of buffalo that once roamed the Great Plains, and while he was primarily interested in depicting the ways of the Native tribes he encountered
