Charles Bird King

Charles Bird King was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1785 and moved to New York in 1800 to begin his formal training with the artist Edward Savage. Five years later he traveled to London to study with the American expatriate Benjamin West, returning to America in 1812. The artist eventually settled in Washington DC in 1819, where he lived until his death. King is best known for his portraits of the Native American delegations that frequently visited Washington. He received his first commission from the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1821–22 and continued to produce portraits for the government agency until 1842. The approximately 90 original paintings were installed in the War Department until they were moved to the newly constructed Smithsonian Institution in 1858—and were subsequently destroyed in the Smithsonian fire of 1865. His work survives, however, in the copies made by the artist Henry Inman and in King’s personal copies and charcoal studies. Inman’s copies of King’s paintings were famously featured as lithographs in Thomas McKenney and James Hall’s History of the Indian Tribes of North America (1836–1844).