An elderly man, bedridden through a long and terminal illness, wished to see the Rocky Mountains before he died. Unable to travel, yet being a man of some means, he hired a number of skilled artists and dispatched them to the West. To each he gave orders to bring him a painting that would display the beauty of the Rockies.
One painter made his way to Banff National Park, to the rise above Morant’s Curve, where he captured a scene of a locomotive pulling a long train through the river valley. Another settled at Lake Louise and interpreted the pristine beauty of the alpine lake and the mountains that encircle it. Other painters chose to go south of the 49th parallel, one to Yellowstone to portray the heights of towering Mount Washburn and another to Colorado and the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Some chose to capture scenes of summer when flowers fill the mountain meadows, some chose autumn when the leaves in the valleys turn brilliant red and orange, some preferred winter when the landscapes are buried in deep snow and all the evergreens are frosted white. Each artist painted his scene, titled it “Rocky Mountains,”
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