El Capitan, Yosemite Valley, California
Artist: Albert Bierstadt (American, 1830-1902)
Date: 1875
Dimensions:
H: 32 3/16 in. (81.7 cm); W: 48 1/8 in. (122.3 cm)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roy Rike
Object number: 1959.18
Label Text:The wonders of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevadas in California were largely known to Americans in the East through travelers’ accounts and photographs and paintings by intrepid artists. Though not the first artist to paint these mountains, Albert Bierstadt’s majestic canvases spurred tourism to the West and helped spark the movement to preserve national lands. Bierstadt’s views of the monumental cliff face of El Capitan helped make this the most recognized site in California’s Yosemite Valley (Ahwahnee Valley).
Landscape scenes like this, painted in the artist’s studio but based on sketches made during journeys to the West, were popular with art collectors in America’s urban centers. Such paintings created a vision for city dwellers of a vast, untamed American wilderness, providing a sense of identity for the young nation. However, these areas eventually preserved as National Parks were not undiscovered or uninhabited before visited by expeditions, gold-seekers, and tourists from the eastern U.S. Yosemite Valley’s Ahwahneechee people had been forcibly and violently removed when the valley was “discovered” by state militias in 1851. A few never left, and others later returned to their ancestral home before again being forced to leave by the U.S. government in 1969.
Landscape scenes like this, painted in the artist’s studio but based on sketches made during journeys to the West, were popular with art collectors in America’s urban centers. Such paintings created a vision for city dwellers of a vast, untamed American wilderness, providing a sense of identity for the young nation. However, these areas eventually preserved as National Parks were not undiscovered or uninhabited before visited by expeditions, gold-seekers, and tourists from the eastern U.S. Yosemite Valley’s Ahwahneechee people had been forcibly and violently removed when the valley was “discovered” by state militias in 1851. A few never left, and others later returned to their ancestral home before again being forced to leave by the U.S. government in 1969.
Not on view
In Collection(s)