After a couple of weeks at the rendezvous, Captain Stewart led a group of friends on a hunting expedition up into the Wind River Mountains, an area that Washington Irving had called “a great bed of mountains… full of springs, and brooks, and rock-bound lakes,” a “ great treasury of waters.” In both his sketches and later oils derived from this side trip, the romantically-inclined Miller probably had in mind the fresh and innovative views of American scenery that artist Thomas Cole had brought back from his expeditions up the Hudson River. But Miller’s landscapes are calmer than Cole’s, especially in this case, with the sunlight blazing into the composition from the upper right, a composition perhaps more influenced by the paintings of the English artist J.M.W. Turner than by Cole. (Troccoli, 1990, p. 16)
The artist; by descent to Louisa Whyte Norton, [Old Print Shop, New York, NY, 1947]; Everett D. Graff, Winnetka, IL; Charles B. Nevins, Chicago, IL; present owner by gift, 2009
