About this work
This is very helpful. I can now confirm that "Buffalo Bull, No. 2" corresponds to **Plate No. 2** from Catlin's *North American Indian Portfolio* (c. 1844) — a colored lithograph titled "Buffalo Bull, Grazing" — which is directly derived from his 1832–33 oil painting *Buffalo Bull, Grazing on the Prairie*. The "No. 2" designation is the plate number from the Portfolio. I have enough grounded information to write a specific, accurate description.
A solitary bull commands the entire canvas. The artwork captures the majestic presence of a solitary buffalo bull, portrayed in mid-graze against a backdrop of serene, rolling hills. The animal fills the foreground with a muscular density that makes the vast prairie behind him feel almost airless. The buffalo bull's long and shaggy black mane falls in great profusion over his head and shoulders , rendered with the close observational attention of someone who had stood near these animals on the open plains. The palette is earthy, with dark browns for the bison and muted greens and yellows for the grasslands against a sky transitioning from turquoise to gray. There is no action here, no hunters or herd — just this one animal, breathing, massive, and utterly at home in a world that was already beginning to vanish.
Catlin made this sketch on the Upper Missouri in 1832 , during his ambitious push through the northern range of the Great Plains. The composition became Plate No. 2 — "Buffalo Bull, Grazing" — a colored lithograph from Catlin's *North American Indian Portfolio*, published around 1844. The image sits at the heart of what Catlin most urgently wanted to record: not just the people of the Plains, but the animal that made their entire civilization possible. His ambitious project was largely fueled by the fear that American Indians, the great buffalo herds, and a way of life would one day vanish — and in hundreds of canvases, he captured the landscape and tribal figures, together with the central importance of the buffalo to Native lifeways.
After Catlin's images became widely known on the East Coast and in Europe, the iconography of the buffalo grew to symbolize both the bounty of the American wilderness and the tragic squander of that gift thanks to the advancing tide of civilization.
As wall art, this print earns its place through stillness. It belongs in a room that isn't trying too hard — a study lined with natural materials, a hallway with good afternoon light, a living room where the furniture sits low and the walls have room to breathe. Catlin's *Buffalo Bull, Grazing on the Prairie* epitomizes this vision: wild, iconic, and tragic at the same time. The viewer it speaks to is someone drawn to American history not as myth but as record — to the idea that a single animal, painted with unflinching clarity nearly two centuries ago, can carry the full weight of a lost world. The mood is quiet and monumental
