Snow peaks, a falling stream and a camp on the sunlit meadow

A wall of snow peaks fills the far distance, and a thin waterfall drops from the notch at the centre into a lake lying flat and silver below it. In front of that, on a broad sunlit meadow, a Shoshone encampment spreads across the picture: conical lodges, a herd of horses grazing loose, and figures gathered among packs and hides. Dark firs and a rocky bluff frame the left-hand side, and the light comes from behind the range, so the peaks are pale and the foreground is warm and green.

Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) was the grandest landscape painter of the American West. Born in Solingen and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts, he trained at the Düsseldorf academy before joining Frederick W. Lander's overland survey to the Rocky Mountains in 1859 — the first of the western journeys that gave him his subject. From the sketches he brought back he built enormous exhibition canvases such as The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak (1863) and Among the Sierra Nevada, California (1868), in which shafts of light break over peaks and mirrored lakes on a scale that drew paying crowds. His paintings are held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Gallery of Art.

Printed as a museum-grade giclée on Hahnemühle fine art paper using 12-ink archival pigment printing. Available handframed in FSC-certified wood with optional float glass, or unframed. Ships worldwide with free delivery to 30+ countries.