Wasatch Range above Salt Lake City by Gilbert Munger
Gilbert Munger (American, 1837–1903)
Untitled (Wasatch Range above Salt Lake City), 1878
Oil on board
25½ × 43½ in.
Signed lower right “Gilbert Munger 1878”
This sweeping mountain landscape appears to belong to Gilbert Munger’s important group of views of Utah’s Wasatch Range. Its composition closely parallels his documented 1873 painting Wasatch Range above Salt Lake City: a dark mountain mass rises at left, brilliant snow-covered peaks stretch across the distance, and water and lowlands form quiet horizontal bands below. That earlier painting has been identified as a view southeast from the vicinity of Salt Lake City, with Mount Olympus at the left.
Munger first encountered Utah in 1869 while accompanying Clarence King’s U.S. Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel. His Western landscapes combined careful observation with dramatic effects of weather and light, qualities especially evident here as a heavy storm cloud gives way to golden illumination across the distant peaks. By 1878 Munger was established in London and continued painting American subjects from his earlier Western studies. That same year King’s monumental Systematic Geology was published with ten chromolithographs based on Munger’s paintings and sketches, including views of the Wasatch Mountains.
