Áudio tour Gallery 3

Bierstadt belonged to the second generation of 19th century artists who depicted the American landscape. The work of the first generation coincided with a period of growing economic prosperity and renewed unity. At a time when the United States was struggling to find its own artistic voice, writers and painters found just the subject in an unsettled, primordial American wilderness unlike any scene in Europe.

Most artists first explored these remote areas as part of expeditions intended to document and assess the economic value of the young nation's natural resources. Documenting native plants and animals was an act of patriotism, a refutation of European claims that the New World was inferior. Painters like Thomas Cole and writers like Henry David Thoreau saw the nation's wilderness as a new Eden, a source of national pride and spiritual solace to be celebrated. Others saw it as savage and primitive, something to be tamed by white men, to be cultivated and civilized, in keeping with the young nation's belief in the idea of Manifest Destiny.