Piute camp, Great Canyon of the Sierra, Yosemite 

Thomas Hill made this landscape painting, titled "Piute camp, Great Canyon of the Sierra, Yosemite," with oil paint on canvas. Like many painters of the American West, he engaged in the skilled traditions of fine art, using brushes and a detailed technique to achieve a convincing illusion of reality. Hill's paintings were not just pretty pictures. They had social significance, promoting the idea of the West as a place of unlimited opportunity and expansion, particularly for settlers of European descent. You can see the Piute camp is small, almost incidental, set against the grand, monumental landscape. The emphasis is on the land itself, ripe for the taking. Although this painting presents the West as an untouched wilderness, its production and consumption were tied to wider social issues of labor, politics, and consumption. Consider the amount of work involved in producing the canvas, refining the oil paints, and transporting the supplies across the country. This painting, therefore, becomes more than just a landscape, it's a statement about the relationship between humans and the natural world, and the power dynamics inherent in that relationship.