18 In the 1860s, several photographers took up the subject of the Green River.12 One of these was Andrew Joseph Russell (1829–1902), who spent more than two years working for the Union Pacific Railroad to visually record the completion of their transconti- nental line. He published an album of his photographic views in 186913 and the following year, a selection was chosen by geologist Ferdinand V. Hayden to illustrate his report, Sun Pictures of Rocky Mountain Scenery. Hayden aimed to describe the geographical and geolog- ical features of the Rocky Mountains and provide “some account of the resources of the great West.”14 Given Hayden’s interest in “peculiar” geological features, it is unsurprising that he illustrated some of Russell’s images of the Green River Valley’s prominent features, including Citadel Rock and Castle Rock in the vicinity of Green River City, Wyoming Territory. It is significant, however, that Hayden chose four Green River area images for his report, as it included only thirty and was meant to depict the most interesting sights on the long route between Cheyenne and Salt Lake City. Photographer William Henry Jackson (1843– 1942) followed in Russell’s footsteps, traveling along the Union Pacific line in 1869. Like Russell, Jackson created pictures near Green River City and docu- mented the area’s inimitable geology (which he called “curious and unique”), sometimes in stark juxtaposi- tion with new infrastructure development.15 Jackson was also known by F.V. Hayden and would become the geologist’s close collaborator, joining him in 1870 and 1871 for groundbreaking surveys of the Yellowstone region. Painters of prominence reentered the Green River scene in the early 1870s. Samuel Colman (1832–1920) stopped through Green River City around 1870 on his way to California.16 Thomas Moran (1837–1926) arrived in July 1871 with support from a New York publishing house and the Northern Pacific Railroad. For both artists, this was their first trip west. The fact that there was still so little extant imagery of the Green was, of course, central to the area’s appeal; for Euro-American painters, the river was yet novel and fertile artistic ground. Though Colman and Moran reached Green River City on the Union Pacific line several years after the laying of tracks stimulated the area’s growth, in key works neither artist referenced the railroad, the imposing bridge spanning the river, or the new community around the crossing. In Colman’s On the Green River, Wyoming (1870) and Moran’s Cliffs of Green River (1874), the artists added romantic group- ings of Native Americans, nostalgically seeking a past further removed than their own experiences, and a past they heavily fictionalized.17 These compositional choices gave the work of Colman and Moran a historic air and allowed the spotlight to shine squarely on the Green’s distinctive shoreline and its towering, castel- lated buttes. Using careful detail and amplifying the effects of light and atmosphere, the artists created convincing and powerful depictions of an unfamiliar American West, which held great appeal for audiences on the country’s east coast and beyond.18 Moran’s first sojourn along the banks of the Green, though fruitful, was only a brief stopover on his way to the Yellowstone region.19 He was, however, evidently smitten at first sight with the Green River cliffs he saw that summer. He would go on to depict them more than forty times, distinguishing the subject as one of his most favored, only outnumbered in his oeuvre by the Grand Canyons of the Yellowstone and the Colorado.20 Most of Moran’s Green River paintings are meticulously crafted, formal studio works created at significant spatial and temporal distance from his experience of the place. Many were inspired by his time on the river with geologist John Wesley Powell in 1873, or later trips. The artist’s earliest depiction of the Green River from 1871—the first sketch he made in the West—was a quickly rendered watercolor and gouache painting that evidences his astounding Andrew J. Russell, Citadel Rock, Green River Valley, 1869 Andrew J. Russell, Castle Rock, Green River Valley, 1868
