Albert Bierstadt (American 1830-1902)
Yosemite Valley, 1866
Oil on canvas on panel
Hinman B. Hurlburt Collection 221.1922
©The Cleveland Museum of Art
Location: Gallery 230Albert Bierstadt visited California's Yosemite Valley in the summer of 1863 during one of his lengthy tours of the American West. On his return to New York, he produced numerous paintings based on sketches he had made. Such views thrilled East Coast audiences who had heard reports of grand mountains rivalling the Alps of Europe. The Native American couple standing in the foreground helps convey the enormous scale of Yosemite's snow-capped peaks and marks this scene as distinctly American.
Fashionable and expensive, paintings like this also spurred early movements to save the country's natural wonders. In 1864, President Lincoln signed a bill preserving Yosemite as public property; it became a national park in 1890