Looking Across the Grand Canyon (Vista al Gran Cañón)

Edward Henry Potthast, American, 1857 - 1927

c. 1910

painting

oil on canvas

Gift of Western Art Associates

1973.18

© Phoenix Art Museum. All rights reserved.

American and Western American

Yes

North Wing, Second Floor, Western American Art Gallery

Established as a National Park in 1919, the South Rim is the site of “parkitecture” by Mary Jane Colter which remains one of the largest collections of historic architecture by a woman artist. The hotels were managed by the Fred Harvey Company, which partnered with the Santa Fe Railway to promote tourism in the Southwest.



In November 1910, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, which established America’s first corporate art collection, commissioned a group of five painters to visit the Grand Canyon, one of whom was Edward Potthast. Although it rained most of the ten days they stayed on the rim, they successfully recorded “their individual impressions of this wonderful work of nature.”