Alfred Jacob Miller (1810-1874) 
Rocky Formations Near the Nebraska or Platte River

Gouache, watercolor, pencil and ink on paper 
Sight size:  7 1/2 x 11 7/8 inches 
Framed size:  12 1/2 x 16 3/4 inches

Titled, upper right; inscribed, upper left

ca. 1837

    Alfred Jacob Miller occupies a singular place in the history of American art as the first professionally trained artist to accompany an expedition into the Rocky Mountain West. In 1837, he joined Scottish nobleman Sir William Drummond Stewart on his journey to the annual Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, producing an extraordinary visual record of the western frontier before large-scale American settlement transformed the landscape. The sketches and studies Miller made during this expedition became the foundation for the paintings and watercolors he produced throughout the remainder of his career, establishing him as one of the most important early interpreters of the American West.

     The Platte River served as the principal gateway to the West during Miller’s historic journey. Flowing across present-day Nebraska, it formed the route traveled by traders, trappers, Native peoples, and, in the decades that followed, the emigrants bound for Oregon, California, and Utah. Although this watercolor was likely executed from memory years after the 1837 expedition—as suggested by its broad inscription identifying the location as “near the Nebraska or Platte River”—it recalls one of the defining landscapes of America’s westward expansion and reflects Miller’s lasting impressions of the region.

     Rather than presenting a strictly topographical record, Miller imbues the scene with the Romantic sensibility that distinguishes his mature work. Five Native American riders race across the open plain, their small scale emphasizing both the immensity of the landscape and the enduring relationship between its inhabitants and the natural world. The dramatic rock formations, illuminated by contrasting passages of light and shadow, reveal Miller’s debt to the eighteenth-century English picturesque tradition, while the luminous, atmospheric sky demonstrates the influence of Joseph Mallord William Turner, whose work Miller encountered during his artistic training.

     As Margaret C. Conrads observed in the exhibition catalogue Alfred Jacob Miller: Romancing the West in the Bank of America Collection (2010–11), “Emphasizing the solidity of the formations and juxtaposing them against an open sky and a high mountain backdrop, Miller endowed the scene inspired by the landscape near Laramie with his initial wonder at their endurance beyond anything in human history.”

Provenance: Eugenia Miller Whyte or Louisa Whyte Norton (by descent from the artist); The Old Print Shop, New York (acquired from the above, 1947); The Boatman’s National Bank, St. Louis (1947); NationsBank, Charlotte (by corporate merger, 1996); Bank of America, Charlotte (by corporate merger, 1998); Sotheby’s, New York, 22 May 2013, lot 101 (consigned by the above); acquired at the above sale by the present owner.

Exhibited: The Boatman’s National Bank, St. Louis, 1964, no. 48; Alfred Jacob Miller: Romancing the West in the Bank of America Collection, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2010–11, no. 25, pp. 124–125, illustrated in color.