Looking down Yosemite Valley, California by Albert Bierstadt
Irana Alibekova and Daria Sokolnitskaya
Picturing America is an educational project, which consists of the collection of art masterpieces. These collections may be seen in different educational centers and public libraries, as the aim of this project is to give some knowledge about the history and the past of the United States of America to young generations. In Russia this project was used by the Herzen State Pedagogical University, at the meeting in Archangelsk (http://vkontakte.ru/event17212715), and also at school № 27 with in-depth study of English. The collection represents a number of paintings, which are dedicated to some important political events such as Selma-to-Montgomery March for Voting Rights in 1965 by James Karales, or to some significant people for instance Abraham Lincoln by Alexander Gardner. Among these pictures we found a fascinating painting, which caught our breath when we saw it. It was “Looking down Yosemite Valley, California” by Albert Bierstadt. This piece of art was done in 1865, and now it is exhibited in the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama.
“It was Bierstadt's 1863 overland journey that inspired him for painting ‘Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California’ of 1865.” (Merrill, Rogers, Simons, Passmore, 36) Today Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California (1865) by Albert Bierstadt is considered to be one of the most important American landscape paintings, and also is a luminous focal point of the Birmingham Museum of Art's American art collection. It has been honored by The National Endowment for the Humanities as one of 40 American masterpieces that describe the people, places, and events that have shown told America's story best of all. In 1991 it became a gift to the Museum from the Birmingham Public Library. Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, is a masterpiece in the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art. The oil painting hangs on the second floor of the Museum, measuring 86 by 118 1/2 inches framed. Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California was a gift from the Birmingham Public Library to the Birmingham Museum of Art in 1991. Even before that, from 1974 to 1991, the painting was on temporal borrowing from the library to the Baltimore Museum of Art. This painting was the main contribution to the National Academy of Design's in New York which Bierstadt had to pay. According to several contemporary accounts, it was hung in "the position of honor." The following year it toured with Bierstadt to Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati.
“Albert Bierstadt was a German-American painter sweeping landscapes of the American West”. (Albert Bierstadt). He was born in Solingen, Germany, but soon he moved with his family to New Bedford, Massachusetts. From the early ages Albert Bierstadt was fond of art, and had a taste for it, he started doing some sketches in his childhood. He studied painting in Dusseldorf, Germany, but began drawing only in New England. In 1859 Bierstadt began travelling through the West America at the beginning with his friend and then alone. By the help of his friend he joined the expedition, which allowed exploring the country. He travelled in the van, and made a lot of sketches and countless number of photos. He always was in love with mountains, he visited a lot of times White Mountain, New Hampshire, Maine. He even left his signature on the highest point of the Mount Washington in 1852.
“As a painter he was part of the Hudson River School, not an institution but rather an informal group of like-minded painters. The Hudson River School style involved carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism”.(Albert Bierstadt) An important interpreter of the western landscape, Bierstadt, along with Thomas Moran, is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School. For his paintings he used only very big canvas, by the help of which he wanted to show all the beauty of the scene and also he wanted the viewers to enjoy the panoramic view of his landscapes, for example the Yosemite Valley in California.
The fact that we have seen other paintings from Bierstadt’s collection of landscapes and learned biography helped us to understand this fascinating piece of art better. Especially, the fact that he travelled so much through the country, and supposedly enjoyed the nature of West America maybe tried to paint every detail of these unforgettable landscapes. From our point of view, it is very important for an artist to enjoy a landscape himself or herself if he or she wants to enjoy it be his or her viewers. He also took pictures of landscapes and mountains, that’s why this Yosemite Valley turned out to be so true on the canvas. Also we learned from our research that he painted people rarely on his landscapes, and there are no human beings on this picture. This absence of people gave us opportunity to enjoy only the beauty of nature and of the Valley.
It would have been toо simple to say that "Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California" is a monumental oil painting by Albert Bierstadt. Once you look at it, you imagine the whole magnitude and strength, represented on one particular painting. One can’t help noticing all the details, shades, plays of light and shadow so masterfully reflected on this masterpiece. The very first time we laid our eyes on this picture we understood at once that it is not just a great Valley but a shrine to human foresight, strength of granite, power of glaciers, the persistence of life, and the tranquility of the High Sierra. This breathtaking, picturesque scenery with its high, plunging, dusky mountains, parched greenery is far flung, rugged and so close to us at the same time.
While looking at the picture you become aware that you have a minute piece of history before you. After his first trip to the American West in 1859, Albert Bierstadt produced a number of landscape paintings of the East Coast that he was eager to return to paint more. In those days when few Americans went west of the Mississippi, Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California offered a wonderful view of one of the natural wonders on such a remote side of the continent. This magnificent work of art gives us a bright presentation of the beauty of American landscape. The picture possesses our attention at such an extent that we are now interested not only in the way the painter expressed his inner state in his work, but also in where this valley is exactly situated, what it is famous for. So we find out that The Yosemite valley is in Yosemite National Park in the western Sierra Nevada mountains of California, carved out by the Merced River. It is about 8 miles (13 km) long and up to a mile deep, surrounded by lofty granite tops such as Half Dome and El Capitan. All these is found out because of the beauty of the picture, that is almost hypnotizing us by it’s charm that attracted our attention at first sight. That’s why we are so glad that have chosen this particular painting/ It gave us a lot of pleasure not only describing it, but also finding all the information connected with the picture and it’s genius author.
Works Cited
“Albert Bierstadt.” Wikipedia. 2011. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. 01 May 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bierstadt>.
Linda, Merrill, Lisa, Rogers, Linda Simmons, and Kaye, Passmore: Picturing America, Teachers Resource book, National Endowment for the Humanities. The United States of America: Scmitz Press, Print
Birmingham 365. Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California. Flickr from Yahoo. 01 May 2011 <http://www.flickr.com/photos/55835045@N04/5269616292/>
