Archives West Finding Aid

Robert C. Graff was an attorney in Washington D.C. and the son of Everett D. Graff, a prominent collector of art and research material relating to the American West. During the course of his life Everett Graff collected a large portion of the Alfred Jacob Miller paintings from the 1837 William Drummond Stewart expedition to the central Rocky Mountains for the American Fur Company. When Graff died many of his paintings were split up among his children, in 2011 Robert Graff donated his paintings to the University of Wyoming, American Heritage Center.

Alfred Jacob Miller was a young American artist hired by Scotsman, William Drummond Stewart to document his 1837 expedition from the Missouri frontier to the central Rocky Mountains for an American Fur Company caravan headed to a rendezvous. During the six-month journey, Miller made 200 or more trail sketches for Stewart, from some of these sketches he painted studio versions to hang in William Drummonds Stewart’s Murthly Castle. Most of the Miller paintings in the Robert C. Graff art collection are some of these studio versions that depict Alfred Jacob Miller’s artistic view of the sights and scenes he experienced on this expedition through Wyoming.