Brushes With Discovery

Among the first artists to create images of the Yellowstone region were adventurers and explorers, scientists, and publicity seekers. Some of them, such as William Tylee Ranney, never actually visited the region. Others, including James Hutton and Anton Schonborn, were members of government expeditions designed to explore Western territories.

---

“I cannot doubt . . . that at no very distant day the mysteries of this region will be fully revealed.”

- Capt. William F. Raynolds, leader of the Yellowstone Expedition,1860

---

By 1860, literary and pictorial accounts began to circulate about this “Wonderland” where “living streams of molten brimstone” constituted “the greatest wonder of the age” (the Montana Post, August 1867). Although the first images of Yellowstone were soon eclipsed by the work of more prominent artists, these early sketches are rare depictions of a distant place on the brink of national recognition.