 At more than five feet (1.7 metres) high and almost ten feet (3 metres) wide, it depicts an idealized landscape in the South American Andes, where Church traveled on two occasions.Its exhibition in 1859 was a sensation, establishing Church as the foremost landscape painter in the United States.The painting has been in the collection of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1909, and is among Church's most renowned works.