Product Information

by Lisa Strong

“An outstanding achievement. Strong’s book is a major contribution to studies not just of western art but American art in general.” –Alex Nemerov, Professor of the History of Art, Yale University

In 1837, Alfred Jacob Miller (1810–1874) became the first American artist to journey into the heart of the Rocky Mountains. He did so as the commissioned expedition artist for William Drummond Stewart (1795–1871), a Scottish nobleman. Their destination: the annual fur traders’ rendezvous near the present-day border of Colorado and Wyoming.

Miller executed some one hundred watercolor and pen-and-ink sketches during the expedition, and he later reworked them into finished watercolors and oils for a variety of patrons. In this landmark catalogue, Lisa Strong takes a new look at Miller’s work for Stewart, revealing how he tailored his western scenes to suit the specific needs and interests of local American audiences. She also crosses national boundaries to explore how Miller’s paintings helped promote a vision of Scottish aristocratic identity.

“This book will set a new scholarly standard for monographs on western art,” said Bill Truettner, Senior Curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and one of the leading scholars in America on western American art. “[It] will bring to the study of western-art patronage a refinement few others in the field have even approached.”

10.5-by-11 inches
240 pages
Over 100 four-color reproductions