A cowboy's dream.

• Author: Couch, Robin L.
• Position: Collection of American West paintings - Corporate Gallery: The Anschutz Collection - Cover Story

THE MORNING SUN WARMS your shoulders. Your worn leather chaps are powdered with dust. You hear the yips of cattlemen closing in on the herd behind you.

Ah, the West. The daydream of many a 10-year-old, donning a brand new cowboy hat and straddling a sturdy branch of a backyard tree.

But was this the true frontier? Or was it more a romantic image conjured up by American artists who traveled westward with the earliest settlers?

Elizabeth Cunningham, curator of the Anschutz Collection of American West art, thinks it's a little of both. She explains, for instance, that Thomas Moran, one of the most popular artists of the West, was known to idealize the landscape in his painting. "Moran felt an artist was obligated to produce for the viewer the impression produced by nature on the artist. That's why he and fellow artist Albert Bierstadt could paint a majestic landscape, but the painting didn't necessarily match the topography of the setting. They would rearrange features to suit them."

Cunningham should know. She oversees a collection that chronicles America's move west from the early 1800s to the mid-1900s. More than 500 paintings represent the works of 185 American West artists. And the roll call is impressive: Bierstadt, Moran, George Catlin, Asher Durand, Charles Bird King, Robert Henri, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Frederic Remington, Charles Russell.

Owned by the Denver-based Anschutz Corporation, which has investments in natural resources, transportation, communications and real estate, the collection grew from President Philip Anschutz's love of the American West.

Anschutz began collecting in the early 1960s and, by 1974, had decided to share parts of the corporate collection through traveling exhibits. The collection made its last tour in 1990 and 1991, heading for--where else?--the American West.

Chaperoned by Curator Cunningham, the exhibit was introduced by West, West, West, a catalog of the artwork on display. In paintings and prose, West, West, West plots America's journey toward the Pacific, offering a detailed timeline that highlights the historic events that took place, from Lewis and Clark's expedition beginning in 1804 to the confrontation between Native Americans and the U.S. government at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973.

In accumulating his collection, Anschutz was able to choose from a wide mix of Western art primarily due to contributions from three important players in the 1800s: the government, the publishing...