O Pioneers!

Author Willa Cather, born on this day in 1873, moved with her family from Virginia to Nebraska at the age of nine.

Cather set many of her finest stories—including O Pioneers!, published in 1913—in the prairie frontier. Although she worked in different media, artist Helen Lundeberg (1908–99) shared Cather's respect for and awe of the vast western landscape.

This excerpt from O Pioneers! could almost describe Lundeberg's painting, Pioneers of the West.

"Although it was only four o'clock, the winter day was fading. The road led southwest, toward the streak of pale, watery light that glimmered in the leaden sky. The light fell upon the two sad young faces that were turned mutely toward it: upon the eyes of the girl, who seemed to be looking with such anguished perplexity into the future; upon the sombre eyes of the boy, who seemed already to be looking into the past. The little town behind them had vanished as if it had never been, had fallen behind the swell of the prairie, and the stern frozen country received them into its bosom. The homesteads were few and far apart; here and there a windmill gaunt against the sky, a sod house crouching in a hollow. But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes."

Source: Willa Cather. O Pioneers! (New York, N.Y.: Penguin Putnam, 1994).

Pictured: Helen Lundeberg, 1908–99, Pioneers of the West, 1934, oil, 40 x 50 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from General Services Administration.