The Golden Lie of Mount Rainier
Sanford Robinson Gifford did not paint Mount Rainier just to capture a pretty mountain view. He painted it because Eastern elites needed a beautiful and profitable lie. It was 1875 and America was expanding fast. The wealthy industrialists in New York wanted pristine visions of the untamed West to hang in their parlors. They paid massive fortunes to get them and Gifford was happy to supply the fantasy.
He had just survived a brutal summer surveying the unforgiving wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. He knew the mud and the biting cold and the sheer terror of that remote landscape. But he kept all that misery out of the paint. Instead he painted a glowing atmospheric haze. He took a harsh rocky peak and elevated it into a pure spiritual manifestation.
Gifford worked the oil on his canvas until he completely hid his brushstrokes. The man essentially created a flawless optical window. Measuring exactly twenty-one by forty inches the piece was perfectly calculated to impress the old guard at the National Academy of Design.
When those wealthy New Yorkers looked at the canvas they did not see the brutal reality of a survey expedition. They saw a divine blessing wrapped in golden light. They saw an empty and waiting world. Gifford gave the buyers exactly what they wanted and left the dirt of the frontier far behind.
References
Gifford, Sanford Robinson. Mount Rainier. 1875. Oil on canvas. 53.3 x 101.6 cm.
Avery, Kevin J. Hudson River School Visions. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003.