Where the Clouds Love to Rest

As scholar Belden Lane suggests, “an evocative landscape, possessed of unanswered questions about its physiographical and social history, seems to ‘call for’ certain kinds of interpretation.” (Lane, 67) Third in Miller’s series of works on the Black Hills, Where the Clouds Love to Rest, depicts a dramatic vista found lacking in the previous versions.

From the darker palette to the sweeping clouds to the gnarled trees and elevated stark, white crest of Laramie Peak, Miller heightens the landscape in order to draw a sharp contrast between the flat rolling prairie terrain that preceded Stewart’s group and the looming mountain landscape that awaits them beyond the South Pass. The pair of deer placed for scale in the foreground, also signal the bounty of wildlife that inhabit the terrain and the promise of good hunting to come.

Emily C. Wilson