Charles Partridge Adams first traveled to Estes Park in 1881. His recollection of “summits glistening with the pure white of winter snows” above “a great valley filled with afternoon mists” echoes Isabella Bird’s description on the nearby wall. Adams set up a studio in Estes Park in 1905 and made hundreds of views of the mountains over the course of his career.
The adjacent paintings show the artist’s interest in seasonal and atmospheric effects. In both views the rosy light of sunrise—or sunset—illuminates the clouds and casts shadows on mountains. The combination of fleeting light, craggy peaks and the reflective surfaces of snow and water are elements that Adams repeated in his landscapes.
Adams was well versed in the aesthetic tradition established by American landscape painters, such as Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) and Thomas Moran (1837– 1926), who employed their arsenal of painterly techniques to construct a fantasy of the untrammeled West.