Alfred Jacob Miller Departure of Caravan at Sunrise 1837 Watercolor 7 3/4" x 14" Courtesy, the Bank of America, Formerly The Boatmen's National Bank of St. Louis Collection. St. Louis, the gateway of lore to the empire of the Trans-Mississippi West, was also a crossroads for generations of artists interested in documenting and depicting the Western landscape. So much so was this the case that this phenomenon has been noted and commented upon at length by numerous art historians. One put it succinctly, recently, in this manner: "St. Louis became the cultural hub not only of Missouri but also of the entire Mississippi Valley... it was superseded as the paramount artistic center of the region only by Chicago towards the end of the century." Nineteenth century artists poured through this distinguished metropolis which possessed a colorful and engaging history from its very beginnings, growing into a humanistic laboratory for the studies of America at its crossroads - geographically, historically, intellectually.