Buffalo Trail: The Impending Storm

Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) was the great painter of the American West, and Buffalo Trail: The Impending Storm combines two of his signature subjects: the western landscape and the wildlife that inhabited it. The buffalo, following a trail across the prairie under a sky darkened by an approaching storm, are rendered with the combination of topographic accuracy and dramatic spectacle that made Bierstadt the most popular landscape painter in post-Civil War America. The impending storm creates the atmospheric drama—dark clouds, slanting light, and the promise of rain—that transforms a straightforward wildlife scene into a sublime experience.

Bierstadt's western paintings were instrumental in creating the national mythology of the American West as a land of vast spaces, dramatic scenery, and abundant wildlife. The buffalo, which were being systematically exterminated in the 1860s and 1870s, appear in Bierstadt's painting as symbols of a vanishing way of life. The impending storm is not just atmospheric drama but a metaphor for the fate of both the buffalo and the Native American peoples who depended on them.

Buffalo Trail: The Impending Storm is Bierstadt's West at its most prophetic: the buffalo following their ancient trail under a sky that threatens the storm of extermination. The storm is both atmospheric and historical—a natural event and a metaphor for what was about to happen to the creatures and cultures of the American West.