Yuccaland--Chihuahua, Mexico

William Henry Holmes's 1889 painting of the Chihuahuan desert landscape in northern Mexico demonstrates his scientist-artist approach to unfamiliar terrain. The distinctive yucca plants of the Chihuahuan desert were of both botanical and geological interest to Holmes, whose professional work took him to many parts of North America in the service of the Smithsonian's geological surveys. His paintings of Mexican landscape are rare documents of an American artist working in this region in the 1880s, before the Mexican subject became fashionable for American painters.

Holmes renders the desert landscape with his characteristic precision, giving particular attention to the distinctive form of the yucca — its spiky rosette and tall flower spike — set against the warm, arid tones of the desert terrain and sky.