These artists capture the landscape in radically different ways

"The West was built on landscape paintings. Those early vistas captured by 19th-century artists — depicting towering mountains, rolling plains, lush forests and free-roaming wildlife — provided ample inspiration for the migration of masses of people who pushed existing Eastern settlements toward the Pacific Ocean.

 

We recognize now that those works of art contained myths about lands that — in retrospect — might have been better left as they were, but that does not change the history of U.S. expansion, or disassociate this part of the country from its connection to colorful works of art that portray the expansiveness of nature or the fundamental attraction it holds for humanity. These objects help us understand who we are, and where we came from.