Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) was the nineteenth century chronicler par excellence of the American West. He undertook several trips to the Rocky Mountains and Yosemite Valley, where he made sketches of what would later become his most famous paintings. This brilliant chromolithograph depicts light breaking through a bank of thunderclouds above a valley. Indians on horseback dash down a mountainside toward an encampment of tepees along the valley. This image brilliantly captures American landscape painting of the period at its most heightened and rapturous. This chromolithograph was issued by Thomas McLean as a pair to The Rocky Mountains (Landers Peak). As many as 20 stones stones were used to capture the rich, sumptuous palette of the original painting, which now resides in the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
(Nancy Anderson and Linda S. Ferber, Albert Bierstadt Art & Enterprise, pp. 274-275).