The West Explored: The Gerald Peters Collection of Western American Art

As James H. Nottage writes in the preface, “The Gerald Peters Collection of Western Art has a range that expresses many different trends, techniques and schools in the art history of the American West. Do not look at the painted canvas for images of dress and equipment as in James Walker’s brilliant oil Roping Wild Horses. Observe pieces such as Thomas Moran’s Green River, Wyoming and think of the painter as a visionary image maker, for the painter’s realm has done much to romanticize our perceptions of the American West.” 

These paintings were the first visual communications of the vast grandeur of the West and the wild beauty of its inhabitants. Featuring 37 artists, including John James Audubon, Albert Bierstadt, Karl Bodmer, Henry Farny, Alfred Jacob Miller, Thomas Moran, Frederick Remington, and many others.

James H. Nottage is the Vice President and Chief Curatorial Officer at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana.  He previously served as the founding Chief Curator at the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles, California and is widely considered an expert in Western and American Indian art.  He is the author of Saddlemaker to the Stars: The Leather and Silver Art of Edward H. Bohlin (University of Washington Press, 1997) and Generation, The Helen Cox Kersting Collection of Southwestern Cultural Arts (Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians & Western Art, 2010).