''The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak'' is an 1863

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the ...

oil painting by the German-American painter Albert Bierstadt. It is based on sketches made during Bierstadt's travels with Frederick W. Lander's Honey Road Survey Party in 1859. The painting shows Lander's Peak in the

Wind River Range The Wind River Range (or "Winds" for short) is a mountain range of the Rocky Mountains in western Wyoming in the United States. The range runs roughly NW–SE for approximately . The Continental Divide follows the crest of the range and inclu ...

of the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico in ...

, with an encampment of Native Americans in the foreground. It has been compared to, and exhibited with, '' The Heart of the Andes'' by

Frederic Edwin Church Frederic Edwin Church (May 4, 1826 – April 7, 1900) was an American landscape painter born in Hartford, Connecticut. He was a central figure in the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, best known for painting large landscapes, ...

. ''Lander's Peak'' immediately became a critical and popular success and sold in 1865 for $25,000.

Background

Hudson River School landscape painter Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) was born in Germany, and, though his family moved to

New Bedford, Massachusetts New Bedford (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ) is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, Bristol County, Massachusetts. It is located on the Acushnet River in what is known as the South Coast (Massachusetts), South Coast region. Up throug ...

, when he was two, he spent many of his formative years in Europe. He made his debut in an 1858 exhibition, but his breakthrough came in the aftermath of a journey he made the following year. In the spring of 1859, Bierstadt joined the Honey Road Survey Party led by then-colonel Frederick W. Lander. Bierstadt traveled as far as the

in the Rocky Mountains and made studies for numerous paintings along the way. Bierstadt was greatly impressed by the landscape he encountered and described the Rocky Mountains as "the best material for the artist in the world."Hine & Faragher (2007), p. 196. Bierstadt habitually extensively prepared for his work, making as many as fifty sketches for a single painting. In 1860, he exhibited ''Base of the Rocky Mountains, Laramie Peak'' at the National Academy of Design. His greatest success, however, came with ''The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak'', which he exhibited in 1863 at the

Tenth Street Studio Building The Tenth Street Studio Building, constructed in New York City in 1857, was the first modern facility designed solely to serve the needs of artists. It became the center of the New York art world for the remainder of the 19th century. Situated at ...

, where he also had a studio.Houston & Houston (1999), p. 69.

Composition and theme

The painting shows Lander's Peak, a mountain with a summit of in the

in modern-day

Wyoming Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...

. The peak was named after Frederick W. Lander on Bierstadt's initiative, after Lander's death in the

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

. In one description of the painting, "Sharply pointed granite peaks and fantastically illuminated clouds float above a tranquil, wooded genre scene."Hyde (1993), p. 368. The foreground is dominated by the campsite of a tribe of Native Americans. The landscape in the painting is not the actual landscape as it appears at Lander's Peak but rather an ideal landscape based on nature, altered by Bierstadt for dramatic effect. Bierstadt's painting hit a nerve with contemporary Americans by portraying the grandeur and pristine beauty of the nation's western wilderness. It was a reference to the idea of

Manifest Destiny Manifest destiny was a cultural belief in the 19th century in the United States, 19th-century United States that American settlers were destined to expand across North America. There were three basic tenets to the concept: * The special vir ...

, where the Rocky Mountains represented both natural beauty and an obstacle to westward expansion.Facos (2011), p. 138. In the words of historian Anne F. Hyde: "Bierstadt painted the West as Americans hoped it would be, which made his paintings vastly popular and reinforced the perception of the West as either Europe or sublime Eden." At the same time, the Native Americans in the foreground gave the scene authenticity and presented it as a timeless place, untouched by European hands.

Depiction of Shoshone Peoples

Bierstadt paints a band of

Shoshone The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ) are a Native American tribe with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshone: southern Idaho * Western Shoshone: Nevada, northern Utah * Goshute: western Utah, easter ...

Native peoples at the forefront of the painting. According to a review in Harper's Weekly from March 26, 1864, ''Lander's Peak'', "is purely an American scene, and from the faithful and elaborate delineation of the Indian village, a form of life now rapidly disappearing from the earth, may be called a historic landscape." Bierstadt illustrated

people along with the majestic peaks as a marker of the "sublime" which authors like

James Fenimore Cooper James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 – September 14, 1851) was an American writer of the first half of the 19th century, whose historical romances depicting colonist and Indigenous characters from the 17th to the 19th centuries brought h ...

John C. Frémont John Charles Frémont or Fremont (January 21, 1813July 13, 1890) was an American explorer, military officer, and politician. He was a U.S. Senator from California and was the first Republican nominee for president of the United States in 1856 ...

, and

Washington Irving Washington Irving (April 3, 1783 – November 28, 1859) was an American short-story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and " The Legen ...

wrote about. Bierstadt does not include who these people are in his painting title. Unlike

Catlin Catlin may refer to: People with the surname *Albertus W. Catlin (1868–1933), US Marine Corps Brigadier General & Medal of Honor recipient *Charles L. Catlin (1842-1901), American lawyer and politician *David Catlin (born 1952), American mathemat ...

, Bierstadt did not focus on the individuality of members of the Shoshone people. Rather, his focus was on their relationship with the landscape. As Bierstadt scholar Matthew Biagell suggests, "He placed them, as he placed European peasants in earlier works, in the middle distance so that we witness their presence in a landscape setting rather than focus on their movements." In 1859,

Eastern Shoshone Eastern Shoshone are Shoshone who primarily live in Wyoming and in the northeast corner of the Great Basin where Utah, Idaho and Wyoming meet and are in the Great Basin classification of Indigenous People. They lived in the Rocky Mountains du ...

peoples lived in the region now called Western

. Bierstadt commented on the

people he saw in a letter from July 10, 1859, which The Crayon, an art magazine, published in September 1859. "The manners and customs of the Indians are still as they were hundreds of years ago, and now is the time to paint them, for they are rapidly passing away, and soon will be known only in history. I think that the artist ought to tell his portion of their history as well as the writer; a combination of both will assuredly render it more complete" Bierstadt adds, "We have a great many Indian subjects. We were quite fortunate in getting them, the natives not being very willing to have the brass tube pointed at them. Of course they were astonished when we showed them the pictures they did not sit for; and the best we have taken have been obtained without the knowledge of the parties, which is, in fact the best way to take any portrait" The

people are depicted on a similar level as the nature of the image. Bierstadt is attempting to capture an image of them and the Rockies, something which he believes must be preserved as a part of history.

Reception

''Lander's Peak'' was an immediate success; twelve hundred people were invited to the exhibition, and almost a thousand showed up. Bierstadt was a shrewd self-promoter and a gifted artist, and this was the first of his paintings to be widely promoted with a single-picture exhibition accompanied by a pamphlet, engravings, and a tour. The painting, with its ten-foot width, was intended both for exhibition halls and the homes of America's emergent millionaire class. In 1865, British railway entrepreneur James McHenry purchased the work for $25,000, the most paid for an American painting to that point. Bierstadt later repurchased it, and gave or sold it to his brother Edward, before it was eventually acquired for the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

in New York in 1907. Comparisons were made between ''Lander's Peak'' and '' The Heart of the Andes'', a contemporary painting by one of Bierstadt's main rivals in the landscape genre,

. The two works represented the two great mountain ranges spanning North and South America. At the New York Metropolitan Fair in 1864, held by the

United States Sanitary Commission The United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) was a private relief agency created by federal legislation on June 18, 1861, to support sick and wounded soldiers of the United States Army (Federal / Northern / Union Army) during the American Civil W ...

to raise money for the

Union Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

war effort, the two paintings were exhibited opposite each other. ''Lander's Peak'' and ''The Heart of the Andes'' are still exhibited on opposite walls at their current location at the Metropolitan. Most reviews of the painting were positive; one review called it "beyond question one of the finest landscapes ever painted in this country", adding, "Its artistic merits are in some respects unrivalled: and added to these it has the advantage of being a representative painting of a portion of the most sublime and beautiful scenery on the American Continent." The painting won a prize at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867. At the same time, there were also critical voices; in particular, some

American Pre-Raphaelites The American Pre-Raphaelites was a movement of landscape painters in the United States during the mid-19th century. It was named for its connection to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and for the influence of John Ruskin on its members. Painter T ...

found his brushwork wanting. One such critic complained that it would have been better "if the marks of the brush had, by dexterous handling, been made to stand for scrap and fissure, crag and cranny, but as it is, we have only too little geology and too much bristle."Mayer & Myers (1999), p. 62.

Notes

References

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External links

''American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School''
an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on this painting (see index)
''The United States of America''
a catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on this painting (p. 74–76) {{DEFAULTSORT:Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, The 1863 paintings Wyoming culture Paintings by Albert Bierstadt Paintings in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Dogs in art Horses in art Native Americans in art