Poster Falls of Saint Anthony by Henry Lewis

Henry Lewis was one of the first explorers who began to travel the upper Mississippi River in the mid-nineteenth century to admire the exuberance of its cataracts. In summer 1847 this painter of English origin established in Saint Louis paid his first trip along this fast-flowing river in a steamboat from Fort Snelling and the Falls of Saint Anthony to New Orleans, making abundant sketches. The following winter he completed a large number of views of the river at his Saint Louis studio, among them the Falls of Saint Anthony, Upper Mississippi in the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection.