View of the Stone Walls

The river’s unusual geology enchanted Bodmer and Maximilian. Their drawings and writings render ancient earth features as natural history specimens and objects of sublime beauty. Completed in his Parisian studio, Bodmer’s dynamic panorama features an exposed stratum of sandstone, today called the White Cliffs and part of the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. These "indescribably strange" walls, wrote Maximilian, create a "narrow gate" at a gap in the river, made "all the more striking because the hills everywhere overtop them, and they form a center streak along the mountains." Bodmer’s technique of sharp contrast conveys the walls’ jagged edges as well as the unevenly weathered rock formation spotlighted in the right foreground.