Artists who wished to emulate Church's success with the 'great picture' were given the opportunity to explore new territory for their subject matter when the American government sent expeditions to the Far West to survey the vast territories now incorporated under Federal rule.

Thomas Moran (1837-1926) Hiawatha, 1867-8 Oil on canvas Museum Purchase, The Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma More about this work...

Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) Rocky Mountains, 'Lander's Peak', 1863 Oil on linen, 110.81cm x 90.17cm The Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Mrs William Hayes Fogg Photo Credit: Katya Kallsen Image © President and Fellows of Harvard College More about this work...

Albert Bierstadt enlisted with Frederick W. Lander's expedition in 1859, travelling through Kansas and Nebraska to the Rocky Mountains, taking photographs of American Indians en route. His first major Western subject showed an imaginary peak named after Lander; a smaller canvas featuring the peak in an epiphanic burst of light is shown in this room. A second journey west, in 1863, supplied Bierstadt with many splendid subjects from the Sierra Nevada and Yosemite. In 1866 he finished an enormous canvas, Storm in the Rocky Mountains - Mount Rosalie, also shown here, in which another imaginary peak is named after his future wife.

Thomas Moran's first American journey of exploration was to the shores of Lake Superior in 1861, when he collected material that was later to be used in three meditations on scenes from Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha. He travelled to the Far West in 1871 with the expedition of F.V.Hayden, whose objective was the region of the Yellowstone River, in north-west Wyoming. Here, under the influence of Ruskin, Moran was able to make detailed drawings of the geysers and hot springs. A huge painting of The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was bought by Congress, and this was followed by another, showing The Chasm of the Colorado (the famous Grand Canyon of Arizona), the outcome of studies made on another expedition, that led by John Wesley Powell in 1873. Moran made many versions of these two subjects during the remainder of his long career, sometimes at the instigation of the railroad companies who sought advertising material for their lines creating new, modern links across the continent.