The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak

1863

Oil on canvas, 186.7 × 306.7 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A Shoshone camp spreads across a valley floor beneath a waterfall and a snow-capped peak in the Wind River Range. Karen Quinn of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, notes that its huge scale was meant to overwhelm eastern audiences.

Bierstadt saw the region in 1859, traveling with Frederick W. Lander's government survey.
Look at the center: the waterfall drops into a still lake that mirrors it, just behind the camp.
Painted later in New York, working from sketches made on that trip.
The Met links the picture to Manifest Destiny: it presented the West as a frontier for White settlers to claim. The Met adds that this belief disregarded Indigenous peoples already there, with grave results, including for the Shoshone the painting shows.
Bought by the Met through the Rogers Fund in 1907.

Image: The Met Open Access · CC0