The Inspiration Behind Arthur’s Honor Visions

Meet the painter who inspired the character of Albert Mason — and Arthur’s honor visions.

All articles on this site feature detailed discussion of literary allusions in Red Dead Redemption 2, and as such contain unmarked major and minor spoilers for the game, and occasionally the eventual fates of some characters in Red Dead Redemption. Read at your own risk.

If any aspect of RDR2 is perfect, it’s the light. Rich and golden, the sunsets and dawns immerse the player in the game’s themes — nostalgia for a lost world; wonder at nature — drawing on the senses to create poignant emotion. That light, itself, is an allusion to a 19th-century artist who in turn inspired one of the game’s most charming minor NPCs. The artist is Albert Bierstadt, who appears in RDR2 as Albert Mason.

While the two men aren’t identical, the similarity is striking, particularly in the jawline, face shape, facial hair, and hairline. Mason is a photographer, which has led some to erroneously assume that Mason is based on Ansel Adams. Although RDR2‘s chronology is often about 30 years off, it’s off in the other direction; Tore C. Olsson points out that much of the game’s history belongs to the 1870s, not 1899 (4). While Adams wasn’t even born until 1902, Bierstadt was active in the mid to late 1800s. No doubt Rockstar changed Bierstadt from a painter to a photographer for practical reasons; after all, it’s hard to imagine even one brief mission that centers on Arthur Morgan helping Mason complete a painting, let alone five such missions. And in fact, Bierstadt was skilled with a camera (Junker 22).

Bierstadt’s paintings are grand and awe-filled, an appeal to the idea of Manifest Destiny that it’s now impossible to view as romantically as he intended (“Albert Bierstadt”). Or, as Patricia Junker puts it, the “resonance” of some of his work has “dissipated” (57).

When composing his works, Bierstadt recombined things he’d seen to “appeal to the imagination” (22), which is similar to Rockstar’s own approach to creating narrative. Perhaps that’s why the writers found him to be such a source of inspiration, despite the fact that his semi-mythological paintings create exactly the kind of mood that Houser has claimed to eschew: he’s said that the creative team wanted Red Dead Redemption to reflect what he calls “the real horror of the West” (quoted in Onyett). Perhaps the writers simply wanted a more romantic tone for the second game. In any case, it’s inarguable that Arthur’s honor visions elevate the story that RDR2 tells.

And most of those visions are based on Bierstadt paintings. They aren’t identical recreations, but the influence on the lighting and composition is obvious:

Bierstadt’s influence on the last of Arthur’s honor visions is particularly meaningful. This painting is called Wapiti. “Wapiti” means “elk” in Shawnee and Cree (Mionczynski) — but the tribe that lives at Wapiti in the game is Lakota. RDR2 doesn’t represent Indigenous people well, so it’s possible the writers just made a lazy mistake, or they could be alluding to a real-world place. Most likely, though, the place is named for the painting — although commentators often call the tribe Wapiti, the game itself never does. Helping the tribe is one of the last major choices the player can make to increase Arthur’s honor, so it makes sense to associate the location with Arthur’s “good” death vision.

Even what Arthur can literally see when he dies resembles a Bierstadt:

It’s a mark of the writers’ respect and gratitude for Albert Bierstadt that Albert Mason is one of the game’s most likable minor characters, and that — unlike so many — he’s given a happy ending.

More RDR2 Locations Based on Bierstadt

In 1863, Bierstadt traveled West from New York City with his friend, Fitz Hugh Ludlow (Junker 7). Ludlow was a writer; on the trip he penned articles describing the land they traveled through, while Bierstadt took sketches that he would later turn into paintings. When Ludlow turned his articles into a book, however, his onetime friend Bierstadt is coldly referred to as “the artist.” By that point, Ludlow’s wife Rosalie had divorced him — and married Bierstadt just six months later (47).

Ludlow is a complicated figure — the son of an ardent abolitionist, he writes about the Indigenous peoples he encountered on the trip with undisguised loathing. Nonetheless, he had some minor influence on the character of Arthur Morgan. His writing focuses on close descriptions of the natural world, just as Arthur skillfully draws plants and animals in his journal. Both men were misanthropic and died of tuberculosis in their 30s.

On that last note, something that happened to Ludlow inspired the ending of “My Last Boy.” He fell ill with what he calls “a violent attack of pneumonia” in Oregon and lodged

in the rural residence of an Oregon landholder, whose tender mercies I fell into from my saddle when the disease had reached its height.

Ludlow 473

In “My Last Boy,” Arthur has a paroxysm of tuberculosis, falls from his saddle, and is cared for by the German family he helped in “A Strange Kindness.”

Ludlow also writes about a rock that he claims looks exactly like John Calvin (234), which may have inspired the Face Rock near Rhodes (not to be confused with the Face in Cliff Point of Interest).

Bierstadt’s brothers Charles and Edward were professional photographers (“Charles Bierstadt”). Charles took this famous image of the Three Brothers in Yosemite. The rock formation itself, if not the photograph, probably inspired RDR2‘s Three Sisters.

Several other locations on the map may have been inspired by Bierstadt paintings: the Old Greenbank Mill, the Trail Trees Points of Interest, the beach below Cinco Torres, and the burned trees in the Grizzlies.

For more on the symbolism of Arthur’s honor visions, check out White Stag: More Allusions to King Arthur and His Knights in RDR2.

All Albert Bierstadt paintings are public domain in the United States because the artist has been dead for over 70 years. To see the original sources, click on the painting titles. To see more of Bierstadt’s work, check out Art Renewal, WikiArt, and Wikimedia Commons.

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