John Mix Stanley chronicled Indian customs and people in 150 paintings that he placed on deposit at the Smithsonian in 1851, hoping they would be purchased by the United States government. Several works from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, made after tribal groups were largely defeated and confined to reservations, reveal the regret and nostalgia felt by many American artists. Born to an African American father and a Chippewa mother, Lewis was one of America's first woman sculptors, establishing a career in Italy in the neoclassical tradition, but selecting subjects that had personal resonance. Lewis attended Oberlin College before establishing a studio in Rome. Artists' fascination with the West mirrored the nation's determination to settle the American continent coast to coast.
Several artworks show the ambitious enterprise that inspires so many to move west.
Wenderoth followed the rush to California when gold was discovered there in 1848. Two smaller landscapes by the artist depict a sunrise view in California and a mountain range in Alaska, revealing how soon artists pursued even the farthest reaches of the new frontier. Thomas Moran's landscapes in the exhibition include views of the Upper Colorado River in Wyoming Territory, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and Kanab Canyon in Utah. Two bronze sculptures by Edward Kemeys , one a small bear and the other showing a buffalo attacked by a wolf, depict animals native to the western regions. Sharp, Couse, Ufer and several other artists in the exhibition were part of Taos School, begun informally when East Coast artists visited the Southwest in the 1890s.