Snow Peaks, Bull Run Mining District, Nevada
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest and The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1986
Accession Number
1986.1054.1
Art Historical Context
**Snow Peaks, Bull Run Mining District, Nevada** (1871) captures the rugged majesty of Nevada's high desert landscape through the lens of Timothy H. O'Sullivan, one of America's pioneering photographers. Taken during the U.S. Geological Explorations of the Fortieth Parallel—a government survey led by Clarence King to map the West for mining, railroads, and settlement—O'Sullivan's image documents the remote Bull Run Mining District. Snow-capped peaks rise dramatically against a vast sky, evoking the sublime wilderness that defined 19th-century frontier expansion and the promise (and perils) of ...
About the Artist
Timothy H. O'Sullivan · 1840–present
Timothy H. O'Sullivan (c. 1840–1882) was a pioneering American photographer whose unflinching lens captured the raw devastation of the Civil War and the sublime vastness of the untamed West. Born in New York City—or possibly Ireland, with his family migrating soon after—his early life remains sparsely documented. As a teenager, he apprenticed under Mathew Brady at the famed daguerreotype studio on...