At the time of this painting, marine art in its modern form was less than a hundred years old. Henning shows the influence of Gustave Courbet's "landscapes of the sea" and of subsequent artists like Claude Monet, albeit in more representational form.…
It's likely that Cheney's painting depicts the Virginia Canyon Road near Idaho Springs, Colorado, also known as the "Oh My God Highway" for its hairpin turns and precipitous cliffs. It had been created in the 1800s to access dozens of gold mines in…