Though the artist met and sketched Shoshone Tribe members during the survey, by omitting them from this landscape Bierstadt visually reinforced the false and harmful myth of the “vanishing Indian.” He presents the American West as a new Eden, bathed in rays of heavenly sunlight. Notably absent from the landscape are the Eastern Shoshone people, who have lived in and around the depicted Wind River Mountain Range for thousands of years. Upon his return to New York, Bierstadt painted the work, which presents a composite scene rather than an accurate topographical rendering. government survey expedition led by Frederic W. This painting is based on sketches that Bierstadt completed in 1859 while serving on a U.S.
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