Falls of the Snake River

Falls of the Snake River of 1872, in the National Gallery of Art, is a landscape subject from the American Pacific Northwest that extends Catlin's documentation beyond the Plains cultures he was famous for into the great river systems of the western United States. The Snake River, which runs through Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, was at the centre of complex territorial and cultural disputes between indigenous peoples and the expanding American settler state throughout the nineteenth century. Shoshone Falls on the Snake River was considered one of North America's great natural spectacles, taller than Niagara. Catlin's treatment of the falls as landscape spectacle participates in the American landscape tradition that saw the continent's natural wonders as expressions of national grandeur.

The falls are rendered with an emphasis on the spectacle of falling water and mist — the white foam of cascading water contrasting with the dark canyon walls and blue-grey sky above. Catlin applies the mist and water loosely, the paint describing movement and atmosphere rather than geological precision, while the canyon walls are given more structural handling.