Alfred Jacob Miller Paintings in New Exhibition at UW American Heritage Center

A new exhibition titled “An Artist’s Journey West: Alfred Jacob Miller, 1837” will open Thursday, May 22, at the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center (AHC).

Miller was the first Euro-American to paint scenes inside the Rocky Mountains, which he accomplished on a trip to the Green River Rendezvous in 1837. The exhibition runs through Friday, Aug. 29, and presents paintings from three collections from Tim and Cathi Newton, Naoma Tate and the AHC.

The exhibition celebrates two exciting milestones, AHC Director Paul Flesher says.

First, it welcomes the AHC’s Miller paintings back to permanent display after a two-year absence. The center owns 21 of Miller’s paintings.

Those central to the 1837 trip have been on tour with the Miller exhibition titled “Alfred Jacob Miller: Revisiting the Rendezvous in Scotland and Today,” which appeared at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody and the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis, Ind.

All of the AHC’s Miller paintings are now again on display in Laramie.

Second, thanks to the generosity of two AHC patrons, the exhibition brings Miller paintings from two collections together with the AHC’s holdings, Flesher says.

The collections are those from Tate and the Newtons -- both from Cody. The paintings from the two collections complement the AHC’s works, featuring both the earliest view of Wyoming’s Hell’s Gate and a rare nighttime scene painted by Miller. This is the first time the 28 paintings have been displayed together, Flesher adds.

Miller was hired by William Drummond Stewart -- a future Scottish baronet -- to record his journey with the American Fur Company to the Green River Rendezvous in 1837. During the trip, he and his companions also spent time hunting the wildlife of the Rocky Mountains. Miller recorded hundreds of scenes in watercolors during the trip.

Once back from the trip, Miller began to use the watercolor sketches as models for his oil paintings. In 1840, Stewart brought Miller out to Murthly Castle, his ancestral Scottish home, where Miller spent a year creating paintings to decorate the castle’s rooms.

This summer, the three AHC collections will bring together watercolor sketches from the 1837 trip, oil paintings from 1840 and works painted in later years but based on the earlier works.

The joint exhibition will run until the end of August, but the AHC’s paintings will remain on permanent display afterward, Flesher says.