Looking Down Yosemite Valley,
California, 1865
by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
In a time when few Americans had ventured west of the Mississippi, Looking
Down Yosemite Valley, California offered a view of one of the natural wonders
on the far side of the continent. Yosemite had been isolated by its geography
until just before mid-century, when the 1848 California Gold Rush brought a
surge of non-indigenous people to the Sierras and the valley was “discovered.”
Bierstadt’s large canvas (five by eight feet) and panoramic view down the valley (20 to 30 miles) were calculated to draw the viewer into the scene. Some
contemporary critics argued that Bierstadt’s methods made the picture look
more like stage scenery than fine art, but this may have been his desired effect.
Bierstadt introduces no actors into his scene – not a single traveler, trapper, settler, or American Indian – and at the center of the composition there is only a
vacant space bathed in a golden light that breaks through the clouds. In Bierstadt’s scenario, the viewer discovers that before so magnificent a landscape,
human beings dwindle to insignificance.
Albert Bierstadt
The painting would have been underway in Beirstadt’s New York studio in
photographed
by Napoleon Sarony
1864, when Abraham Lincoln set Yosemite aside as a state park. But when the
Transcontinental Railroad was completed five years later, the region was
Source: Wikimedia Commons
flooded with tourists who wanted to see the places they knew only from paintings and photographs. Returning to Yosemite in 1872, Beirstadt lamented the loss of the unspoiled wilderness he had portrayed only a few years earlier.
(Sources: Picturing America Teachers Resource Book. Washington, DC: National Endowment for the Humanities, 2008; Picturing America,
http://picturingamerica.neh.gov/)
About the artist
Born in Germany, Albert Bierstadt was brought to Massachusetts as a baby. At the age of 21 he determined to be a painter, and moved to Germany to study. He returned to Massachusetts in 1857, and in 1858 he went west on a surveying expedition. There Bierstadt first saw the grand scenery that would become the chief subject matter of his paintings.
With the opening of the West there was enormous interest in the splendor of the mountain scenery. Bierstadt executed
numerous small sketches on the spot, which he combined and rearranged in his studio to produce panoramas of large
scale. His early sketches of the West, with their silvery light and poetic mood, marked the final flowering of the romantic
style in American painting. Although Bierstadt’s sketches are fresher and more spontaneous, his huge canvases were eagerly sought and commanded prices from $5,000 to $35,000.
During his lifetime Bierstadt received many honors, and Congress purchased two of his paintings for the Capitol in Washington, D.C. He became a member of the National Academy of Design in New York in 1860.
Bierstadt’s wealth enabled him to build a mansion at Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y., where he lived in great style. Although
he was honored as America’s most successful painter, other artists resented him. In the 1880s new styles in painting
caught the public’s fancy. By the time of his death in 1902, Bierstadt’s work was regarded as old-fashioned and outdated.
In the 1940s, after 50 years of oblivion, his work began to regain popularity as interest in American romantic painting revived. His smaller works, especially the earlier sketches, are now greatly admired.
(Source: “Bierstadt, Albert (1830-1902).” Encyclopedia of World Biography. Detroit: Gale, 1998. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 5 Mar. 2011.)
Learn more about it
Print
758.1 M
Hudson River School. New York: Crescent, 1989.
917.9 O
O’Hara, Pat. Yosemite National Park. Del Mar: Woodlands, 1985.
979.4 A
Axon, Gordon. The California Gold Rush. New York: Mason/Charter, 1976.
979.4 LLO
Lloyd, J D. The Gold Rush. San Diego: Greenhaven, 2002.
979.4 ROS
Rosen, Fred. Gold! New York: Thunder’s Mouth, 2005.
979.404 H
Holliday, J S., and William Swain. The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1981.
VT 971.9 Y
Yosemite, A Gift of Creation. Reader’s Digest Home Entertainment, 1988.
Online
American Eden: Landscape Paintings of the Hudson River School
http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/4aa/4aa360.htm
California As We Saw It: Exploring the California Gold Rush
http://www.library.ca.gov/goldrush/
Gold Fever!
http://museumca.org/goldrush/fever01.html
The Gold Rush’s Impact on California’s Landscape
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldrush/peopleevents/e_landscape.html
National Geographic: Yosemite National Park
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0610/landscapes/yosemite/gallery1.html
PBS: Artists of the American West
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/ihas/icon/bierstadt.html