Wind River, Wyoming
by Albert Bierstadt
Oil on canvas, c. 1870
Private Collection

The painting of Wind River, Wyoming, by Albert Bierstadt, was borrowed from the Philip Anschutz Collection, Denver, Colorado, as a testimonial to President Theodore Roosevelt's 1905 Presidential Inauguration and the expedition of Lewis and Clark from 1803 to 1806.

Albert Bierstadt was one of the premier artists of the nineteenth century, famous for his large canvases depicting the grandeur of the American West.  Born in Germany in 1830, his parents brought him to the United States at an early age.  Bierstadt experienced his first trip into the unexplored western territories when he was chosen to be the artist for a United States government expedition in the spring of 1859.  When the expedition reached South Pass at the southern end of the Wind River Range, Bierstadt and a companion left the party and spent several weeks sketching and taking photographs of the Wind River area.  Wind River, Wyoming was probably painted from sketches he made during this visit to the Rocky Mountains.