High Pass, Canadian Rockies 

Levon West made this print, High Pass, Canadian Rockies, sometime in the first half of the 20th century. It depicts a group of travelers crossing a snowy mountain pass on horseback, dwarfed by the vast landscape. In the early 20th century, there was a growing interest in the North American landscape. As railways expanded westward, artists, photographers, and writers sought to capture the sublime beauty and untamed wilderness of the Canadian Rockies. Prints like this one catered to a growing market for images of adventure and exploration. West's emphasis on the smallness of the figures relative to the natural environment speaks to the sublime in nature. The image also evokes a sense of the frontier and the rugged individualism associated with the Canadian West. To better understand West's motivations, we might look at the exhibition histories of galleries that championed landscape art in this period, as well as the cultural and economic factors driving tourism and settlement in the Canadian Rockies. Art is always bound up in the social and institutional contexts of its time.