American Art Collaborative

Painting by Alfred J. Miller, Indian Encampment in the Wind River Mountains, circa 1850. Alfred Jacob Miller was a Baltimore artist hired by the Scottish adventurer William Drummond Stewart in 1837 to record his hunting journey to the Rocky Mountains. Traveling with the American Fur Company, Miller and Stewart witnessed the 1837 “rendezvous,” where Native peoples and fur traders came together for business and pleasure. In October of 1840 Miller traveled to Stewart’s Murthly Castle in Scotland, where several of his paintings were hung in part of a decorative scheme that also included the elaborately carved bison chairs (see 91.41.1 and 91.41.2).