Lot Essay
Sacramento Valley in Spring is one of many impressive works that resulted from Albert Bierstadt's trips to California in the 1860s and 1870s. In this work, Bierstadt has focused one of the 'Big Trees' of California, a subject that had made America's west coast legendary since mid-century.
This painting relates to a larger canvas entitled Sacramento Valley in Spring (California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California) painted in 1875. In both compositions, Bierstadt includes specimens of towering trees and a quietly meandering river which is either the Sacramento or the American, both of which run though the Sacramento area. Visible in the distance is the capital dome which rises above a distant line of trees. Since the capital dome was completed in 1872-3, which can therefor date the painting to Bierstadt's visit to the area after that date.
Ironically, "Bierstadt saw neither the Rockies nor California until well after a full corps of writers, journalists, surveyors, and forty-niners had whetted the appetites of both Europeans and Americans for visual confirmation of the alpine peaks, enormous trees, and stunning valleys they had described with all the exclamation words would allow. Ironically, Bierstadt's 'late' arrival was perfectly timed, for it allowed him to capitalize on the nation's eagerness to finally see what such accomplished writers as Washington Irving, Richard Henry Dana, Francis Parkman, John C. Frmont, and Bayard Taylor had already described in travel books, histories, survey reports, and countless newspaper columns. " (N. Anderson, Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise, New York, 1990, p. 70)
The lush landscape of the West Coast was absolutely fascinating to Bierstadt's East Coast audience. The nineteenth century descriptions of the West Coast that appeared in the newspapers and magazines seemed unbelievable to those who had not visited the region. A series of photographs that were exhibited in New York in 1863 that created widespead interest in artifacts of the west coast and confirmed that "Yosemite was not an exaggeration and that the Mariposa redwoods did, in fact, dwarf every other living thing." (Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise, p. 79)
In Sacramento Valley in Spring, Bierstadt has transcribed all of the glorious elements that he witnessed and that were made famous in contemporary descriptions, such as a review in The New York Post (describing a group of photographs of California) "The views of lofty mountains, of gigantic trees, of falls of water which seem to descend from heights in the heavens and break into mists before reaching the ground, are indescribably unique and beautiful. Nothing in the way of landscape can be more impressive or picturesque." (Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise, p. 79)
This painting relates to a larger canvas entitled Sacramento Valley in Spring (California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California) painted in 1875. In both compositions, Bierstadt includes specimens of towering trees and a quietly meandering river which is either the Sacramento or the American, both of which run though the Sacramento area. Visible in the distance is the capital dome which rises above a distant line of trees. Since the capital dome was completed in 1872-3, which can therefor date the painting to Bierstadt's visit to the area after that date.
This painting relates to a larger canvas entitled Sacramento Valley in Spring (California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California) painted in 1875. In both compositions, Bierstadt includes specimens of towering trees and a quietly meandering river which is either the Sacramento or the American, both of which run though the Sacramento area. Visible in the distance is the capital dome which rises above a distant line of trees. Since the capital dome was completed in 1872-3, which can therefor date the painting to Bierstadt's visit to the area after that date.
Ironically, "Bierstadt saw neither the Rockies nor California until well after a full corps of writers, journalists, surveyors, and forty-niners had whetted the appetites of both Europeans and Americans for visual confirmation of the alpine peaks, enormous trees, and stunning valleys they had described with all the exclamation words would allow. Ironically, Bierstadt's 'late' arrival was perfectly timed, for it allowed him to capitalize on the nation's eagerness to finally see what such accomplished writers as Washington Irving, Richard Henry Dana, Francis Parkman, John C. Frmont, and Bayard Taylor had already described in travel books, histories, survey reports, and countless newspaper columns. " (N. Anderson, Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise, New York, 1990, p. 70)
The lush landscape of the West Coast was absolutely fascinating to Bierstadt's East Coast audience. The nineteenth century descriptions of the West Coast that appeared in the newspapers and magazines seemed unbelievable to those who had not visited the region. A series of photographs that were exhibited in New York in 1863 that created widespead interest in artifacts of the west coast and confirmed that "Yosemite was not an exaggeration and that the Mariposa redwoods did, in fact, dwarf every other living thing." (Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise, p. 79)
In Sacramento Valley in Spring, Bierstadt has transcribed all of the glorious elements that he witnessed and that were made famous in contemporary descriptions, such as a review in The New York Post (describing a group of photographs of California) "The views of lofty mountains, of gigantic trees, of falls of water which seem to descend from heights in the heavens and break into mists before reaching the ground, are indescribably unique and beautiful. Nothing in the way of landscape can be more impressive or picturesque." (Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise, p. 79)
This painting relates to a larger canvas entitled Sacramento Valley in Spring (California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, California) painted in 1875. In both compositions, Bierstadt includes specimens of towering trees and a quietly meandering river which is either the Sacramento or the American, both of which run though the Sacramento area. Visible in the distance is the capital dome which rises above a distant line of trees. Since the capital dome was completed in 1872-3, which can therefor date the painting to Bierstadt's visit to the area after that date.