George Catlin, born Wilkes-Barre, PA - Antelope Shooting-no. 20 - unknown - T-Shirt

This hand-coloured lithograph shows a group of pronghorn antelope on the open plains, with a prone hunter lying in the grass and a feathered figure nearby, all set beneath a wide, quiet sky.

Visual Elements & Composition

The scene is a horizontal rectangle built from soft, layered colour. Pale sage green fills much of the lower ground, while warm sky tan opens the upper half. Buff brown and deep olive mark the rolling hill and the shadowed grass, and paper cream lights the margins like aged paper. A single lone tree stands on the hillside, giving the eye a fixed point across the open space. The words "ANTELOPE SHOOTING" appear in the artwork, anchoring the scene as a titled record.

Meaning & Symbolism

George Catlin, born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, spent his career documenting Native tribes and their environments on the American frontier. This plate records the skill and patience of Plains hunters who stalked pronghorn across the prairie, and it shows a subsistence way of life tied closely to the land and its wildlife. Catlin's aim was to preserve these practices and the people behind them before westward expansion reshaped the region, so the image reads as a document as much as a landscape.

On the Unisex Heavy Cotton Tee

A tee carries this scene across the chest, so the hunt, the herd and the open sky are seen at close range and in motion as the wearer moves. The horizontal composition sits naturally on a torso, with the lone tree and rolling hill spreading across the front. Wearing it puts a 19th-century record of Plains life in everyday view.