Dakota Badlands, 1860
by William Jacob Hays Sr. (1830–1875)13 3/4 by 24 1/2 inches
Signed, dated and inscribed with title on verso
Information
Provenance
Private collection, Long Island, New York
Artist Biography
William Jacob Hays, Sr. was a talented nineteenth-century artist known for his landscape and wildlife paintings. He resided in New York City and kept a studio in the famous Tenth Street Studio Building, where he worked alongside such noted artists as Frederic Church, Sanford Gifford, and Martin Heade. In 1860, he took a five-month trip out west, traveling up the Missouri River to the Yellowstone River, recording breathtaking expanses of the Great Plains, the Dakotas and Montana. Hays used his field sketches to produce atmospheric paintings of the American West, which served as early documentations of vast, unexplored lands. Inspired