The popular image of the West in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries incorporates radically opposing images: the West is viewed as a Garden of Eden at times, but it is also frequently seen as violent, a land inimical to man. The region both attracted and repelled. Among those attracted were artists who carried back some of the first images of the land. Thomas Moran (1837-1926) became associated quite early with the West because a pair of his paintings of western canyons was purchased by the United States Government.