Thunderstorm in the Rocky Mountains

Late in 1859, back in New Bedford, Massachusetts, from his first journey west with a government survey party, Bierstadt let a photographer into his studio. The stereograph that survives shows him at the easel putting the last touches to this canvas while four local men look on, a sea captain, the town's collector of customs, the owner of a music shop and a carpet merchant. Propped on the easel beside the painting is a stereo card, presumably one of the photographs taken on the expedition. Bierstadt's brothers Charles and Edward were photographers, and the following year they began publishing stereoscopic views of the New Hampshire hills.

The picture is modest in size, under 75 centimetres wide, and Bierstadt marked it at lower left with his monogram and the year, 59. In 1863 the Boston dealers Williams and Everett sold it to Elias T. Milliken, and it stayed in his family for 80 years, until his daughters gave it to the museum in 1943 in his memory.