View of Nauvoo
Unknown Artist
- Medium
1848-1850
Oil on canvas
This painting, one of the earliest images of the city painted after the Saints fled to the West in 1846, shows the city as part of an exotic and romantic story. Publishers in the eastern United States and in Europe were eager for images of the abandoned Latter–day Saint religious metropolis. An engraved image of this painting was published in United States Illustrated in 1854 or 1855. The city’s religious identity was visually reinforced by exaggerating the scale of the prominent white walls of the temple in the center. In the foreground is a log home suggesting that Nauvoo was built on the edge of the American frontier. Located on a bend of the Mississippi River, the city offered one of the most dramatic views for riverboat travelers between St. Louis and St. Paul. This painting was created after the temple was burned in 1848, but before most of the walls were knocked down by the tornado of 1850.