Image and Imagination: Art of the American West
Collage of Artwork
Documenting Westward Expansion Link Revealing an Unseen Landscape Portraying the Native American


Bierstadt Upper Falls of the Yellowstone oil on canvas

Albert Bierstadt, Upper Falls of the Yellowstone, oil on canvas, 1872.
Courtesy the Woodcock Foundation for the Appreciation of the Arts
On our left, and towards the setting sun, and blue and purple in the distance, rose the shining summits ... and near its base, a blotched mass of deep green (its pines and cedars), underlined by a streak of white, the sands of its shore, at ebb tide. No imagination could paint, and few artists' pencils ever have painted, scenes so grand and so picturesque as these.

George Catlin (1796-1872), Last Rambles Amongst the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and of the Andes, 1866.

Gardner Across the Continent on the Kansas Pacific

Alexander Gardner, Across the Continent on the Kansas Pacific, photograph, c.1867.
Collection of the Mercantile Library at the University of Missouri-St. Louis

Revealing Westward Expansion Slide1 Link Revealing Westward Expansion Slide2 Link Revealing Westward Expansion Slide 4 Link
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