19th century AD

Although painted in London, The Wasatch Mountains resembles works Munger did a few years earier in San Francisco. On June 27, 18733, a local newspaper, Alta California, mentioned Munger's "views near Salt Lake... at earliest sunrise or just as the sun, sinking in the west, [throws] its final light up on the extreme mountain-tops with their glowing summits in strange contrast with their glowing summits in strange contrast with the grey gloom." Munger maintained a studio in San Francisco until November 1873 with periods spent in New York City and Minnesota. California subjects appear frequently in his work of these years. One of the most celebrated is A Glinpse of the Pacific (P1 XII) 1870, which portrays a view of Ocean Beach, San Francisco, from the dunes just south of the Cliff House on the westernmost edge of the city. As in most luminist paintings, a simple composition, half of if sky, creates a sense of a vast universe in which man and his problems play a minor role. The San Francisco Call of May 13, 18 70, praised.

The dark finn breadth of the hill, so direct against the long, warm, yellow and the beach, stretching miles away against the hazy blue of the ocean... [It] gives a perspective of remarkable simple and natural beauty, creating a strength to the foreground, where... no clumps of trees, dwellings of figures have enabled the artist to give artificial force to his picture. Its entire simplicity is us power.

This sentiment was echoed by the Alta California critic, who wrote. "The scene is remarkable for its simplicity... It seems the embodinent of quiet-the antithesis of tumult." [6]

While in California, Munger journeyed to sites in the Sierra Nevada, including Yosemite, Donner Lake, and Lake Tahoe. On November 7, 1872, he wrote from "Summit Sierra Nevada" to his brother in Minnesota that he was "sketching this place with Bierstadt. We work from sunrise to sunset, muffled up to our eyebrows in furs, for the weather is intensely cold." [7] "Summit" refers to the summit of the Donner Pass, where the transcontinental railroad crossed the Sierra Nevada on its way east. From this point Donner Lake and Lake Tahoe are easily accessible.

A rediscovered Munger painting of Lake Tahoe in November (Pl. XIII) looks east from Tahoe City like Key's painting in Plate VIII. Light behind the mountains in the east indicates that it is sunrise. Perhaps this stands for a new day dawning in America because of the recent discovery and annexation of the great wilderness of the West, symbolized by Lake Tahoe. At the time Munger was painting this picture, Bierstadt was at work on the final studies for his major painting of 1873, Donner Lake from the Summit (New-York Historical Society, New York City), which depicts sunrise on that lake about fifteen miles from Lake Tahoe. In Bierstadt's picture dawn is a metaphor for the start of a more civilized era ushered in by the railroad.

Munger's painting creates a mood of quiet expectation that often prevails in nature early in the morning. He achieved this through his realistic approach to the scene, capturing its essence with a wealth of Illusionistic detail. In this way, realism becomes not a hindrance to, but a facilitator of a metaphorical interpretation of the work.