Legend of the Desert was a major early painting exhibited by DuMond at the Paris Salon. It is very representative of the subject matter and aesthetics popular in late-nineteenth-century European painting. From midcentury on, artists of all nationalities produced thousands of paintings of the Mideast to satisfy the public’s curiosity about exotic lands, and many artists in search of brilliant sunlight actually traveled to North Africa. DuMond emphasized the glaring desert light by surrounding the figures with large expanses of reflective ocher sand. Based on the biblical story of Hagar and Ishmael dying of thirst while lost in the desert (Genesis 21:8-20), DuMond took artistic liberties with the representation of Ishmael, making him older than the baby of the biblical story. The subject demonstrates the close association between orientalist themes and religious painting, which experienced a revival in the 1880s. While DuMond modeled the figures fully, he approached the total composition two-dimensionally, eliminating the horizon and any sense of distance, thereby flattening the image. He attenuated the figures' anatomy, in particular Ishmael’s, by splaying his body out across the picture plane. The scene becomes a highly manipulated, two-dimensional design. Somewhat unusual was DuMond’s mixing of sand and pebbles into the paint surface along the lower foreground to heighten the feeling of gritty sand. When DuMond signed the painting he added the place name Tipazah, probably referring to Teashur, a village in the Holy Land near Beersheba. According to the biblical account, Hagar and Ishmael wandered in the part of the desert known as the Wilderness of Beersheba. It seems quite extraordinary that DuMond, striving for authenticity, would paint such a huge canvas on site, rather than back in his studio. Perhaps the reference to Tipazah in the signature merely refers to the place where the artist first conceived of the painting.

After the centennial of 1876 the foremost place for American artists to show was no longer New York but Paris. By the late nineteenth century the Paris Salon was the most important exhibition space in the Western world. Artists from many nations would submit their best works to its annual exhibition. The honor of being accepted presaged an artist’s future success. Thousands of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper were presented at each Salon; the exhibition halls were so crowded that paintings were hung to the ceiling with sculptures scattered about. To be hung “on the line” (at eye level) meant a work of art ranked among the best in the show. Since a painting might be skied (hung near the ceiling), many artists painted on a large scale to ensure that their work could be seen no matter where it was placed.
Contrary to earlier periods, American painting in the late 1800s was no longer dominated by a single aesthetic. Munich-school paintings—narrative scenes, often based on literature or history and painted in a dark palette—as well as small figure paintings in the realist tradition were popular in both France and the United States. Large portraits represent the academic style that dominated official taste during this era. Bright, sun-drenched scenes by a more progressive group of artists, the impressionists are diametrically opposite in color, mood, and concept to muted tonalist and symbolist works. Whereas the impressionists celebrated contemporary life with all its transformations, the tonalists and symbolists created hazily illuminated, dreamlike imagery.
Sculptures range from academic examples of idealized mythological imagery to expressions of the newer interest in the emotive potential of the human form. Equestrian bronzes by Frederic Remington demonstrate that at the turn of the century there was a continuing enthusiasm for heroic depictions of the West despite the increased internationalism of American taste.