Albert Bierstadt
1863

This and other popular canvases by the German-born
Albert Bierstadt shaped the visual identity of the
American West in the United States and abroad.
Stemming from an expedition the artist had made in
1859 to present-day Wyoming and Utah with Colonel Frederick W. Lander,
the painting advertised a frontier destined to be claimed by
white settlers according to the doctrine of Manifest Destiny
-- the belief that Americans were the divinely ordained masters
of the continent -- notwithstanding the Indian encampment depicted
in the foreground. Publicly exhibited to great acclaim, the
monumental painting made Bierstadt a rival of the preeminent
landscape painter, Frederic Edwin Church.

from: Met