Las Montañas Rocosas, pico Lander

Bierstadt finished this in 1863, in the middle of the Civil War, and it shows a West most Americans buying it would never see. He had sketched the Rockies in 1859 on a government survey led by Frederick Lander, an engineer. When Lander died fighting for the Union, Bierstadt named the great peak after him. So the picture carries a small war memorial hidden inside a wilderness scene. In the foreground a Native American encampment goes about its day beneath light that pours down almost like stage lighting. Audiences read it as proof of the nation's destiny to fill the continent, even while the country was tearing itself apart in the East. It sold in 1865 for 25,000 dollars, an enormous sum at the time.