Moonrise in the Canyon, Moab, Utah

Great cliffs of Moab, Utah rise up in a blaze of unexpected color in this 1928 landscape by Birger Sandzén, a Swedish-American painter who fell hard for the American West. The rock formations here glow with oranges, blues, greens, and purples, hues you would never guess belonged to desert stone. A twisted little tree bends in the foreground while a pale moon lifts quietly between the cliffs, spilling soft light across the calm water below. Up close, the whole scene breaks apart into thousands of thick dabs of pure paint, almost like a mosaic pieced together by hand.

Sandzén made his home in Kansas in 1894 and taught art for decades at a small college there, but the vast open spaces out west kept pulling him back. He traveled often to paint canyons, mountains, and rivers, working with a bold energy that reminded many people of Van Gogh and the Post-Impressionists. Rather than copying nature exactly, he chased the feeling of a place through color and rhythm. That approach turns this rugged, rocky canyon into something warm and alive, a stony landscape that hums with an almost musical energy.