Snow-dusted mountain range over sagebrush plain under clouds

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Snow sits in the high folds of a mountain range while the sagebrush plain below stays dun and open, with clouds stacked over the ridgeline. The title places the scene in the West, and the gallery's New Mexico grouping suggests the high desert country of the state, where broad basins of sagebrush and grass run up against ranges that often hold snow into spring. Scenes like this drew painters and photographers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who saw in such wide, empty country a sense of scale that town life could not offer.

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