This painting has come to represent the ideal of Manifest Destiny.
This painting is an allegorical representation of the modernization of the new west. Here Columbia, a personification of the United States, leads civilization westward with American settlers, stringing telegraph wire as she sweeps west; she holds a school book as well. The different stages of economic activity of the pioneers are highlighted and, especially, the changing forms of transportation.
This painting has come to represent the ideal of Manifest Destiny.
Museum of the American West
Griffith Park, Los Angeles, CA
Oil painting
12 ¾” x 16 ¾”