Provenance: Trosby Galleries, Palm Beach, Florida Mr. and Mrs. Lester Avnet, New York and Palm Beach circa 1971 Mrs. Grant William Breur, Englewood, Colorado Private Collection, Wyoming This work will be included in Melissa Webster Speidel’s forthcoming catalogue raisonné. Beginning around 1876 and running through the 1880s, Albert Bierstadt painted a series of wildlife images showing elk, mountain sheep and mountain goats. The artist was drawn to a specific composition that he would repeat in numerous works. “In all these paintings, the animals are placed on rocky precipices; viewed from a low vantage point, placing them above the viewer; and silhouetted against a cloudy sky or darkened landscape. They are depicted as noble creatures in a vast wilderness terrain,” writes Melissa W. Speidel in Albert Bierstadt: Witness to a Changing West. “…Paintings such as [these], in which the animals exude vigor and vitality, are a reflection of the artist’s own sense of well-being after his time in the Yellowstone wilderness.” The work here, Rocky Mountain Sheep, is unique to many of the other pieces of this era, primarily because it includes so much of the landscape, which is given prominence alongside the strong form of the animal subject. The timing of these paintings, including this one, reflect Bierstadt’s growing concern about conservation and the role of wildlife within America’s wilderness.