View of the Crystal Mountains, Brazil

Executed in oil on card mounted on paperboard, the painting is presented in an oval format set within a rectangular mount featuring green outer borders and a mauve inner field. Small labels reading 516 and A 411 appear on the mount. Catlin employed smooth, blended brushwork to create a misty, unified effect across the composition. The palette is dominated by muted greens, warm ochres, and soft rose tones. Light is diffused throughout the scene, lacking harsh shadows, which suggests either dawn or dusk and contributes to an overall finish that is polished and idealized rather than ruggedly naturalistic.

Following Catlin's death in 1872, the painting descended to his three daughters, Clara Gregory Catlin, Louise Catlin Kinney, and Elizabeth Wing Catlin. In 1912, the American Museum of Natural History in New York purchased the surviving works of the Cartoon Collection from Elizabeth Wing Catlin. The museum deaccessioned the collection in 1959, selling the works through Kennedy Galleries in New York to Paul Mellon of Upperville, Virginia. Mellon donated 351 works from this group, including this painting, to the National Gallery of Art in 1965. The artwork was included in a 1970 exhibition at the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, an international traveling exhibition organized by the United States Information Agency from 1989 to 1990, and National Lending Service exhibitions in Oneonta, New York, in 1992, and Coral Gables, Florida, in 1994 and 1995.

During the mid nineteenth century, George Catlin produced two major bodies of work. His first, the Indian Gallery, comprised more than 500 portraits and genre scenes of Native Americans completed in the 1830s, with most surviving works now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Decades later, during the 1850s and 1860s, Catlin produced a second collection of more than 600 works, which he termed the Cartoon Collection. This later series expanded his focus to include South American landscapes and indigenous communities. The painting of the Crystal Mountains fits directly within this second endeavor, reflecting Catlin's ongoing effort to document the Western Hemisphere's peoples and geographies. The work has been cataloged in National Gallery of Art publications in 1970, 1980, and 1992.

As a component of the Cartoon Collection gifted to the National Gallery of Art, the painting remains a vital record of Catlin's South American expeditions and his broader ethnographic and geographic project. Its inclusion in international exhibitions, such as the Sudamerica traveling exhibition in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Santiago, underscores its role in representing nineteenth century North American perspectives on South American landscapes. The preservation of the collection at a major national institution ensures the continued study and visibility of Catlin's later career, broadening the historical understanding of his work beyond his earlier, more famous North American portraits.