American artist Alfred Jacob Miller (1810-1874) joined Sir William Drummond Stewart, a Scottish nobleman and adventurer, to chronicle a journey in 1837 to the Rocky Mountains to attend an annual gathering of fur traders. Miller became the first, and perhaps only, artist to paint the legendary fur trade from firsthand knowledge. Thereafter, Miller based his art on the rich experiences from that trip.

"Romancing the West" presents thirty captivating works on paper, spanning the subjects and techniques that the artist developed over more than thirty years. Mainly studio works in various stages of completion and in a sometimes unorthodox fusion of media, they provide a window onto not only how Miller worked, but how he envisioned the American West.

Margaret C. Conrads is the Samuel Sosland Senior Curator of American Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. The other contributors include William H. Truettner, Lisa Strong, Kathleen A. Foster, and Stephanie Fox Knappe.

A new look at George Caleb Bingham's iconic river paintings and his creative process in making them George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879) moved to Missouri as a child and began painting the scenes of Missouri life for which he is now famous in the 1840s. Navigating the West explores how Bingham's iconic river paintings reveal the cultural and economic significance of the massive Mississippi and Missouri waterways to mid-19th-century society. Focusing on the artist's working methods and preparatory drawings, the book also explores Bingham's representations of people and places and situates these images in a dialogue with other contemporary depictions of the region. Of particular note are two landmark essays investigating Bingham's creative process through comparisons of infrared images of 17 of his paintings with both his preparatory drawings and the completed works, casting new light on his previously understudied process. Technical analysis of the artist's lauded masterpiece, Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, reveals Bingham's considerable revisions to the painting. In the concluding essay, the 20th-century revival of the artist's work is discussed within the context of American Regionalism and in light of a shifting sequence of narratives about the nation's past and future. Distributed for the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and the Saint Louis Art Museum Exhibition Schedule: Amon Carter Museum of American Art (10/04/14-01/04/15) Saint Louis Art Museum (02/22/15-05/17/15) The Metropolitan Museum of Art (06/22/15-09/20/15)