The First Three Western Journeys of Albert Bierstadt

The First Three Western Journeys of Albert BierstadtAuthor(s): Gordon HendricksSource: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Sep., 1964), pp. 333-365Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3048185 .

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THE FIRST THREE WESTERN JOURNEYS OF ALBERT BIERSTADT

GORDON HENDRICKS

HE purpose of this article is to delineate and document the first three Western journeys of Albert Bierstadt (which probably gave rise to the bulk of his significant work) and to indicate a number of the works either made during these journeys or resulting from

studies made on the spot.' From conventional struggling beginnings, Bierstadt passed through a period of almost incredible commercial success to near-oblivion late in life. Only in recent years, with the accumulation of considerable new material concerning the artist's life and work, has there been a revival of interest in Bierstadt. It may be useful, therefore, to reexamine the years of his greatest artistic activity.2

THE I859 TRIP

The first journey began with a letter of introduction from the Secretary of War dated April 8, 1859:"

The bearer of this note, Mr. A. Bierstadt, who proposes to accompany Colonel Lander's wagon road party, has been introduced to me as an artist and a gentleman of character, and as such I commend him to the courtesy and kind attention of the commanders of such military posts as he may visit.

John B. Floyd Secretary of War.

This letter was apparently sent to Bierstadt's home, for on April I5 he and his colleague, S. F. Frost,' had only then "just set out" :

x. I am grateful for the help of the following persons in the preparation of this article: Dr. Joseph A. Baird; the Bartfield Gallery proprietorsi Mr. Guido Castelli; Mr. George Chapellier; Miss Marjorie W. Childs; Mr. Anthony M. Clark; Miss Edna Coe; Miss Dorothy Cogswell; Mr. W. G. Constable; Miss Alice Dodge; Miss Louise Dresser; Mrs. Joyce Edwards; Dr. John C. Ewers; Mr. James W. Fosburgh; Mrs. Alys Freeze; the staff of the Frick Art Reference Library; Mr. Henry M. Fuller; Mrs. R. H. Gladding; Mr. William H. Gerdts; Mr. John M. Graham II Mr. Walser S. Great- house; Miss Marion Hall; Mr. James S. Healey; Mr. William Hutton; Mr. Fenton Kastner; Mr. Thomas W. Leavitt; Mr. Wolfert Lockwood; Mr. Sanford B. D. Low; Mr. A. Hyatt Mayor; Mr. Garnett McCoy; Mrs. Dorothy McCurry; Mr. Frederick T. McGuire; Mr. George McMurray; Mr. Kneeland McNulty; Mr. Paul Mills; Mrs. Frank H. Molitor; Mrs. Dorothy Morang; Miss Maria Naylor; Mr. Beaumont New- hall5 the kind staffs of the Art Division of the New York Public Library and of the New-York Historical Society, particularly Miss Geraldine Beard, Miss Shirley Beresford, Mr. Arthur Carlson, Mr. Thomas Dunning, Miss Betty Ezequelle and Dr. James J. Heslin; Mr. Allan R. Ottley; Mr. Glenn Read; Mr. Leigh Robinson; Miss Lise Rueff; Mr. Robert Schoelkopf; Mr. M. Douglas Sexton; Mr. C. R. Smith; Mr. Victor Spark; Mr. Robert E. Springer; Mr. Donald S. Strong; Miss Ninfa Valvo; Louise Lochridge Watkins; Dr. Thurman Wilkins; Mrs. Mabel S. Williams; and Miss Marjorie F. Williams.

2. Albert Bierstadt was born January 7, x830 in Solingen, near Diisseldorf, and, apparently at the age of one, was taken by his parents to New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he grew to manhood. (Eugen Neuhaus, The History and Ideals of

American Art, Palo Alto, Stanford University Press, 1931, p. 82, says that he was born "at the time of his parents' first visit to their native country.") Having shown artistic promise as a youth, Bierstadt went to Dfiisseldorf to study in 1853. After four years, which included tours through Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, he returned to New Bedford in

1857. It was not until his return from the Lander expedition late in 1859, his "working up" of studies taken on that trip, and his presentation of one or more of these works to the National Academy of Design in i86o, that he achieved a very considerable reputation. Another trip to the West in 1863 produced more studies and greater fame-as well as substantial financial success.

The artist built a large home at Irvington-on-the-Hudson in x865-i866, and on November 2x, i866, married Rosalie Osborn of Waterville, New York, the divorced wife of Fitz Hugh Ludlow, his companion on the x863 journey. Trips to Europe, additional trips to the West and again to Europe, Canada, Alaska, Nassau, and elsewhere, produced more work, greater celebrity, and an elevated social life. The taste of the time then began to leave the artist behind, and financial difficulties appear to have set in.

In March 1894, after his wife's death on March x, 1893, in Nassau, he married Mrs. David Stewart, the mother of Isabella Stewart Gardner. He died on February 18, 1902, in New York City.

3. Unpublished; kindly supplied to me by Mr. Beaumont Newhall, Director of the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York.

4. Efforts to identify S. F. Frost have been inconclusive. The Lander report refers to him as S. F. Frost of Boston, but the Boston directory listings from x855 to x865 show only one S. F. Frost, a provisions dealer. It is significant



334 THE ART BULLETIN

Messrs. Bierstadt and Frost have just set out for a sketching tour among the Rocky Mountains. They intend to join Colonel Lander's wagon train at St. Louis, and will probably be gone eight or ten months.

Our best account of this trip is from the official report dated March I, 1860, sent by Colonel

Frederick William Lander to the Secretary of the Interior." This account, together with Bier-

stadt's July io letter (see p. 337), the Tuckerman account (see p. 338), the Harper's Weekly account of August 13, 1859, a study of contemporary maps, and the artist's work resulting from the trip, afford a fairly clear itinerary and chronology for this first Western trip. This

Lander expedition has often been misdated' and Colonel Frederick William Lander has often been

called a "general"- which he became two years later." He was a remarkable man, if one may

judge from the industry with which he had explored the West on previous occasions for a trans-

continental railroad," with a dash only suggested in the formal language of his March I, i86o

report:

Your instructions of March 25, 1859 directed me to proceed to the frontier and thence to the south pass of the Rocky Mountains; to go over the road opened last year, make such improvements upon it as might be necessary; thereafter, to proceed to Honey Lake Valley by the Humboldt river route, for the purpose of obtaining a continuous survey over the whole road and further information of a route said to exist north of that river, or of such a route as might be developed by examination . . .

The main expedition, under my direction reached the South Pass on the 24th of June . . .large numbers of the returning and destitute emigrants to the Pikes Peak gold mines were met . . .many . . . [joined us. My] Emigrant Guide, transmitted to the department January 20oth, 1859 . . . one thousand of them having been written [sic] . . .

The season has been an unusual one; the mountain streams swollen by constant rains, and the Green river higher than ever before [within memory] ....

The main expedition joined that of Mr. Wrenshall"o . . on the Ist of August. Immediate arrangements were made for breaking up the party and discharging the employes . . .

In the meantime a small party was dispatched to the States... . This party included those individuals who did not desire to go on to California.

A. Bierstadt, esq., a distinguished artist of New York, and S. F. Frost, of Boston, accompanied the expedition with a full corps of artists, bearing their own expenses. They have taken sketches of the most remarkable of the views along the route, and a set of stereoscopic views of emigrant trains, Indians, camp scenes, &c., which are highly valuable and would be interesting to the country. I have no authority by which they can be purchased or made a portion of this report.

A map of the western division . . . is herewith transmitted.

Trump assumes, from undesignated sources, that "the artists" (Bierstadt and Frost?) met him

in St. Louis and that the Lander train left St. Joseph, Missouri, in the first week of May." But this may be a mistaken impression based on the Lander report's account of the advance expedition of William H. Wagner, who was sent ahead to explore the area west of Salt Lake City." Wagner left Troy (adjacent to St. Joseph) on April 30.

that there was no listing in 1859: the canvass took May i residences into account and Frost would have been gone from the city at that time. The Crayon of September 1859, quoting Bierstadt's July o letter (see p. 337), refers to this man only as "Mr. F---- ." Probably, as Miss Maria Naylor of the Kennedy Galleries has said, "S. F. Frost" is an error for "F. S. Frost," the American painter (b. 1825).

5. The Crayon, April 15, 1859. 6. House Executive Document 64, 34th Congress, 2nd

Session. 7. The following, for example, state that the trip occurred

in 1858: Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists, New York, 1867, p. 389; Dictionary of American Biography, 1929, II, p. 253; Eugen H. Neuhaus, op.cit., p. 82; Mrs. H. J. Tay- lor, Yosemite Indians and Other Sketches, San Francisco, 1936, p. 8o0; California Art Research, Vol. 2, First Series, W. P. A., I936-1937, P. 104; The M. & M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings z8r5 to z865, Boston, 1949, p. 74; Harold

McCracken, Portrait of the Old West, New York, 1952, p. 38i Van Wyck Brooks, The Times of Melville and Whitman, New York, 1953; Elliot Candee Clark, History of the National Academy of Design, New York, 1954, p. 120; James T. Flex- ner, That Wilder Image, Boston, 1962, p. 295.

8. On May 17, I861, according to the National Cyclopedia of American Biography, 1924, VIII, p. 127.

9. He filed official reports on February 27, 1853, in x855, and on February 26, 1858.

io. Wrenshall had been sent to Salt Lake City ahead of Lander's main party. There he had recruited a band of Mormons and traveled to "the western end of the new road (i.e., "Lander's Cut-off") . . . commenced the repair of it, working toward South Pass."

Si. Richard Shafer Trump, Life and Works of Albert Bierstadt, unpublished doctoral thesis, Ohio State University, 1963, p. 66.

i2. Lander, op.cit.



FIRST THREE WESTERN JOURNEYS OF ALBERT BIERSTADT 335

We know that the Lander expedition had reached only the South Fork of the Platte in June and South Pass only on June 24-which would make the beginning of May far too early a de-

parture date. The first date is from Harper's Weekly of August 13, 1859:

SOUTH FORK OF THE PLATTE, June, 1859. Far distant upon the boundless prairies stretching away toward the setting sun, and over four hundred

and fifty miles from the border towns of the Missouri River, this letter is written for the amusement and instruction of your readers. The author, dressed in a soiled suit of corduroy, and with a ventilated slouched hat upon his head, is seated upon the tongue of a wagon, with a five-gallon vinegar-keg for his writing desk, while at the same moment the first teams of Colonel F. W. Lander's South Pass Wagon-road Ex- pedition are entering the water at the crossing of the South Fork of the Platte.'"

At the present date both banks of the river are lined with the wagons and animals of the emigrants; and the happy owners of those which have successfully "passed over Jordan" may well cast their eyes across the swelling flood and gaze with Christian resignation upon the toiling and struggling pilgrims who have yet to prove their faith and endurance. The water rushing over the wagons, the plunging and kicking of the mules, and the imprecations of the teamsters, render the scene one of peculiar interest; and to add to it, Dog Belly, chief of the Ogallalah band of the Sioux tribe of Indians, with a small party of his braves, are grouped around Colonel Lander's carriage, smoking the pipe of peace. Mr. Albert Bierstadt, of Boston, the artist of the expedition, is engaged in sketching their appearance. And it is to his pencil that we are indebted for the illustrations accompanying this article.

The second date, June 24, is from the Lander report cited above: "The main expedition, under

my direction, reached the South Pass on the 24th of June."

Presumably it took Lander (since his equipment was similar to Wagner's) an amount of time similar to Wagner's to reach Fort Kearney from Troy, Fort Laramie from Fort Kearney, and

South Pass from Fort Laramie. It took Wagner eight, nine and ten days respectively to cover these distances. Thus the trip took Wagner or Lander twenty-seven days from Troy/St. Joseph to South Pass. Since we know that Lander reached South Pass on June 24, we can assume, if he was not delayed," that he and Bierstadt set out from the St. Joseph area on or about May 28,

I859. This would put them in Fort Kearney about June 5, and at the Crossing of the Platte after about a third of the time (it was about a third of the distance) spent between Fort Kearney and Fort Laramie, or about June 8. We have thus arrived at a logical approximate date for Bier- stadt's Crossing the Platte (Fig. I) and a terminus ante for Crossing the Plains and A Pike's

Peaker, all three reproduced as engravings in the Harper's Weekly article of August 13, 1859, and presumed to be by Bierstadt. The Harper's correspondent, "seated upon the tongue of a wagon, with a five-gallon vinegar-keg for his writing desk," may be seen at the right in Fig. I.

We also have, with this crossing of the South Platte, a terminus post for the studies for The North Fork of the River Platte (or North Fork of the Platte, Nebraska), now unlocated, since it was not until this crossing that Bierstadt saw the North Fork.

Sioux Village (or Chimney Rock, Ogalillah)15 may be dated about June I2, since the party arrived in Fort Laramie about June 14, and as the study for Sioux Village occurred within sight of

Chimney Rock-about two days' travel from Fort Laramie. [Wyoming] Sioux Village Near Fort Laramie (see Appendix, No. 18) we may thus date about June 14, the approximate arrival date at Fort Laramie, and [Wyoming] Indians Near Fort Laramie (see Appendix, No. 6) at the same time. Platte River-Indians Encamped (or Platte River-Indian Encampment; see Appendix,

13. After traveling along the south bank of the Platte from Fort Kearney (and probably farther east), the trail crossed the South Fork of the Platte near the mouth of Lodge Pole Creek near Julesburg, Nebraska.

14. He was sent to "improve" the road from South Pass westward: surely only the need for rest and some slight pro- visioning would have stayed him.

15. There is a reproduction of Sioux Village in Ralph Henry Gabriel, The Lure of the Frontier, in the Yale Univer-

sity Series The Pageant of America, 1929, p. x8o. Chimney Rock is shown in the far left distance of this picture. The caption credits this reproduction to The Ladies Repository of

x86o, but this is incorrect. This engraving is the frontispiece of The Ladies Repository, xxvI, January 1866, where it is called Chimney Rock, Ogalillak. Chimney Rock may be seen on p. 389 of the W.P.A.'s excellent Nebraska: A Guide to the Cornhusker State, New York, I939.




No. i i) may or may not be the same work as [Wyoming] Sioux Village Near Fort Laramie (Fort Laramie is on the Platte). There is some suggestion that Platte River-Indians Encamped (or Platte River-Indian Encampment) was shown in the fourth gallery of the National Academy's 18 61 show. According to The Crayon,16 it was, "although a small canvas, ... his best work." The

quality of [Wyoming] Sioux Village Near Fort Laramie is high, and it is easy to concede that The Crayon's critic would have been delighted with it. Verso markings on this work add to the

possibility of an identity: "... . for Sale A. Bierstadt. Studio Building 15 Tenth Street NY": ac-

cording to the Academy exhibition catalogue the works were marked "for sale" or not "for sale"- and with the artist's name and address.

There is also a possibility that [Nebraska] River Platte, Nebraska is the same work as the above-mentioned The North Fork of the River Platte (or North Fork of the Platte, Nebraska). This work was a canvas"1 approximately the size of [Nebraska] River Platte, Nebraska and was shown in the 1863 Academy show."1 It was rhapsodized by Tuckerman:

Its breath of light in the background specially, is indeed admirable. Its rock-painting is particularly vigorous. Great tubular masses of limestone, up-ended and broken into successive ledges-their ruin partly bold and staring, partly veiled under tender foliage-are more picturesque than any remains of British abbeys, and in their symmetry amid destruction give almost a similar suggestion of the work of man. The sky and water of this landscape are pure to the last degree."1

A Platte River by Bierstadt, which could have been the same work, was sold at a Leeds & Co. auction in New York, May 12 or 13, 1864.20 Emigrants Camping, shown at the Academy 1861 show, could have been sketched at any point along this route.

Bierstadt was at South Pass-where he got his first glimpse of the Wind River Mountains which so fascinated him21-on June 24. On his way from Fort Laramie, and about halfway to South Pass, he passed the spot that inspired [Wyoming] On the Sweetwater River Near the Devil's

Gate, Nebraska (Fig. 3).22 On July I, Bierstadt was still in the Wind River country, for the verso of [Wyoming] View

Looking Northwest from the Wind River Mountains, the Wahsatch Mountains seen in the distance (see Appendix, No. 22) has this inscription in the artist's hand: "Sketched from nature July Ist 1859. Painted in New York 186o. A. Bierstadt." The author of the Karolik catalogue (see note 7) correctly points out that at no point on what was then or is now known as the Wind River Mountains could the Wahsatch Mountains have been seen by an individual looking northwest. He may have seen Wahsatch outliers looking west across what is now Bridger Basin.

By the time of his July Io, 1859, letter to The Crayon, Bierstadt had already explored this Wahsatch range to some extent, for he explains that although from a distance it appears to be

settled, it actually is not:23

i6. April x861, p. 94. 17. According to Zeitschrift fir bildende Kunst, 1870, p. 73. 18. 1863 catalogue of the annual exhibition of the National

Academy of Design, New York, p. 13.- S9. Tuckerman, op.cit., p. 391. 20o. New York Evening Post, May i9, 1864. 21. I have relied chiefly on the excellent map published

by the U.S. Government in 1867: National Map/of the/ Territory of the United States/from the/Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean./ Made by the Authority of the Hon. O. H. Browning Secretary of the Interior/ . . . Compiled from authorized explorations . . . by W. J. Keeler, Civil Engineer./ 1867.

22. On the verso, in pencil in the artist's hand, is the legend, "on the Sweet water near the Devil's Gate/Sketched

1859./ Nebraska/ Price $xoo, with Frame." (Capitals uncertain.) Also on the verso is the label of the paper board seller, carrying the seal of the British Empire and reading: PREPARED MILLBOARD/ WINSOR & NEWTON/ ARTISTS' COLOURMEN/ To Her Majesty/AND TO/ HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT/38, RATH- BONE PLACE, LONDON. It will be understood, of course, that at the time of Bierstadt's 1859 trip, all this country was included in what then was Nebraska Territory. "The Devil's Gate" is the name given to the extraordinary chasm through which the Sweetwater flows west of what is now Casper, Wyoming.

23. The Crayon, September 1859. This letter is most miserably garbled by Tuckerman, op.cit., and the garbling has been quoted by subsequent writers.




ROCKY MOUNTAINS, July 10 [18591 Dear Crayon:

If you can form any idea of the scenery of the Rocky Mountains and of our life in this region, from what I have to write, I shall be very glad; there is indeed enough to write about-a writing lover of nature and Art could not wish for a better subject. I am delighted with the scenery. The mountains are very fine; as seen from the plains they resemble very much the Bernese Alps, one of the finest ranges of mountains in Europe, if not in the world. They are of a granite formation, the same as the Swiss mountains and their jagged summits, covered with snow and mingling with the clouds, present a scene which every lover of landscape would gaze upon with unqualified delight. As you approach them, the lower hills present themselves more or less clothed with a great variety of trees, among which may be found the cotton-wood, lining the river banks, the aspen, and several species of the fir and the pine, some of them being very beautiful. And such a charming grouping of rocks, so fine in color-more so than any I ever saw. Artists would be delighted with them-were it not for the tormenting swarms of mosquitoes. In the valleys, silvery streams abound, with mossy rocks and an abundance of that finny tribe that we all delight so much to catch, the trout. We see many spots in the scenery that remind us of our New Hampshire and Catskill hills, but when we look up and measure the mighty perpendicular cliffs that rise hundreds of feet aloft, all capped with snow, we then realize that we are among a different class of mountains; and especially when we see the antelope stop to look at us, and still more the Indian, his pursuer, who often stands dismayed to see a white man sketching alone in the midst of his hunting grounds. We often meet Indians, and they have always been kindly disposed to us and we to them; but it is a little risky, because being very superstitious and naturally distrustful, their friendship may turn to hate at any moment. We do not venture a great distance from the camp alone, although tempted to do so by distant objects, which, of course, appear more charming than those near by; also by the figures of the Indians so enticing, travelling about with their long poles trailing along on the ground, and their picturesque dress, that renders them such appropriate adjuncts to the scenery. For a figure painter, there is an abundance of fine subjects. The manners and customs of the Indians are still as they were hundreds of years ago, and now is the time to paint them, for they are rapidly passing away; and soon will be known only in history. I think that the artist ought to tell his portion of their history as well as the writer; a combination of both will assuredly render it more complete.

We have taken many stereoscopic views, but not so many of mountain scenery as I could wish, owing to various obstacles attached to the process, but still a goodly number. We have a great many Indian subjects. We were quite fortunate in getting them, the natives not being very willing to have the brass tube of the camera pointed at them. Of course they were astonished when we showed them pictures they did not sit for; and the best we have taken have been obtained without the knowledge of the parties, which is, in fact, the best way to take any portrait. When I am making studies in color, the Indians seem much pleased to look on and see me work; they have an idea that I am some strange medicine-man. They behave very well, never crowding upon me or standing in my way, for many of them do not like to be painted, and fancy that if they stand before me their likenesses will be secured.

I have above told you a little of the Wind River chain of mountains, as it is called. Some seventy miles west from them, across a rolling prairie covered with wild sage, the soap-plant (?) and different kinds of shrubs, we come to the Wahsatch, a range resembling the White Mountains. At a distance, you imagine you see cleared land and the assurances of civilization, but you soon find that nature has done all the clear- ing. The streams are lined with willows, and across them at short intervals they are intersected by the beaver dams; we have not yet, however, seen any of their constructors. The mountains here are much higher than those at home, snow remaining on portions of them the whole season. The color of the mountains and of the plains, and, indeed, that of the entire country, reminds one of the color of Italy; in fact, we have here the Italy of America in a primitive condition.

We came up here with Col. F. W. Lander, who commands a wagon-road expedition through the mountains. At present, however, our party numbers only three persons; Mr. F--- , myself, and a man to take charge of our animals. We have a spring-wagon and six mules, and we go where fancy leads us. I spend most of my time in making journeys in the saddle or on the bare back of an Indian pony. We have plenty of game to eat, such as Antelope, mountain grouse, rabbit, sage-hens, wild-ducks, and the like. We have also tea, coffee, dried fruits, beans, a few other luxuries, and a good appetite-we ask for nothing better. I enjoy camp life exceedingly. This living out of doors, night and day, I find of great benefit. I never felt better in my life. I do not know what some of your Eastern folks would say, who call night air injurious, if they could see us wake up in the morning with dew on our faces!

We are about to turn our faces homeward again, the season being a short one here, and to avoid the fall deluge on the plains, which renders the roads almost impassible.

Yours, B.




With the approach of the rainy season, the productive part of the 1859 trip was drawing to a close. But before Bierstadt, Frost, and the man in charge of the animals (where was Lander's "full corps of artists"?) started back, more studies were made: [The Rocky Mountains] Base of the Rocky Mountains;24 [The Rocky Mountains] Sunset. Grand Tetons;25 Thunderstorm in the Rockies (see Appendix, No. 21); Wind River Valley;26 [Wyoming] The Rocky Mountains (Fig. 2) ;27 [Wyoming] The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak (Fig. 5);28 [Wyoming] The Rocky

Mountains, Laramie Peak;9 [Wyoming] A Sioux Camp near Laramie Peak; [Wyoming] Sho- shone Village (Fig. 6);30 [Wyoming] Sunset Light, Wind River Range of the Rocky Mountains

(Fig. 4) ;" [Wyoming] Wind River Mountains, Nebraska (see Appendix, No. 24); and [Wyo- ming] Wind River Mountains, Nebraska Territory (see Appendix, No. 25). The last-named

picture, now untraceable, was shown in the 1862 National Academy show; it might be the same work as [Wyoming] Wind River Mountains, Nebraska, but this seems unlikely, considering the

importance of the Academy presentation and the fairly small size of the Milwaukee panel. The only record we have of what happened to Bierstadt and his companions after he left the

Wind River Mountains (shortly, we may presume, after July 10, 1859) is from Tuckerman, op.cit.:

Having completed his studies for a landscape which should combine all the characteristic traits of Rocky Mountain scenery, he left Lander's party while it was still west of those mountains, in the Wasatch range, in Southern Oregon [sic], and set out on his return to the States, through a dense wilderness and mountainous region, occupied by a savage people, and with only two men as attendants. For a great part of their journey they were obliged to depend entirely upon the game they could obtain, and in several instances were days without water. The party reached Fort Laramie in safety, after a journey of many days, through a country perilous even for a body of armed troops.

24. Described in The Crayon of March 186o0: "... we have an extensive valley, viewed from an eminence in the foreground, and bounded on the horizon by lofty mountains; the eye ranges over fresh green bottomlands, broad sunburnt steppes, gentle undulations dotted with isolated trees, and over a winding stream, its banks lined with the rugged cottonwood. The distant mountains which rise above the plain and stretch across the entire background, consist of precipitous crags and deep ravines, overlooked by a towering peak, beyond which, on either side, snow mountains recede, the broken outline of the vast chain losing itself to the delicate atmosphere, its side illuminated by the warm glowing rays of a setting sun. In the foreground a group of Indians and horses, a hunting party, and some whitened buffalo bones; to the right we see stray buffalo, and beyond immense herds of this animal, some browsing and others rushing over the hills in the direction of the river enveloped in clouds of dust, while a distant cloud of smoke shows the haunt of an encampment and one more sign of human presence. .. ." According to The Crayon of May 186o, the picture was over eight feet in length.

25. There is no evidence that Bierstadt traveled to the Grand Tetons on this trip. Since he was in the Wind River Mountains on July I, in-and possibly out of-the Wahsatch by July I0, and ready to leave the area, it would have been almost impossible for him to touch the Tetons. The Grand Teton works appear to belong to a nostalgic, reminiscent period of the artist's later life-possibly some time after the Yellowstone trip, when the artist was painting rainbows, waterfalls, etc., into many of his canvases. But I have found no evidence that he was ever in the Tetons: certainly his "Teton" works do not look like the Tetons.

26. See Appendix, No. 24. This title is not from the artist, but seems logical, considering the date and the fact that the Wind River Mountains are the only American mountains the artist had seen as high as this.

27. Also called "Camping Ground of the Red Indians" by

The Art-Journal, England, August 1868. 28. Much has been said of Bierstadt's geographic in-

accuracy. In [Wyoming] Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, he named a peak according to his whim. Here he has renamed what many believe to be actually Fr6mont Peak (if we consider its juxtaposition to the headwaters of the Green River) in honor of the man who led the expedition to which he belonged. A "Lander's Peak" appears to be unknown to geographers. General Land Office maps of 1892, 1888 and 1879 fail to note such a peak, although they all name Fr6- mont, the 1879 map showing only Fr6mont in the whole area. Rand McNally Commercial Atlas and Marketing Guide, x962, also fails to list Lander's Peak.

29. See Appendix, No. 15. This work, apparently lost in a fire which destroyed the school to which it had been loaned by what is now the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, is described by Art in America of April 194o as follows: "Laramie Peak was painted at a distance of several miles from the mountain range, and admirably shows the approach: a bit of prairie, the foot-hills, and finally the more abrupt ascent of the mountains themselves, the "Peak" reaching up, up, snow-capped and cloud-encircled. The river, turning with a broad majestic sweep to the left, in the foreground, can be traced in its zigzag course across the plain, until-a thread of light-it is lost among the foothills. Life and vitality is given here by the buffalo hunt, a scene of twofold interest, for the fate of man and beast here portrayed is pronounced: the Indian has lost his freedom, the buffalo, noble 'rover of the plains,' is now so rapidly becoming extinct."

30. With the Winsor & Newton label. On the verso in the artist's hand: "Shoshone Village among the cotton-wood Trees on the sweetwater river Wind-River mountains in the distance." Note the close similarity of the foreground of this work to The Wolf River, Kansas (Fig. 7).

31. This work is closely similar in subject matter to [Wyoming] The Rocky Mountains.




Tuckerman apparently got this information directly from Bierstadt, who was recalling the cir- cumstances only eight years later: ". .. he left Lander's party while it was still west of [the Rocky Mountains] in the Wasatch range in Southern Oregon." We can dismiss the "Southern Oregon" as bad geography, but the "still west of the [Rocky Mountains] in the Wasatch range," rings true. Bierstadt's ensuing hardships would have had as an unforgettable point of reference the location of the beginning of those hardships.

He must have arrived in the East shortly before the editorial deadline for The Crayon for November I859. In that issue the following report appeared: "Bierstadt has returned lately from the Rocky Mountains to New Bedford, and has brought with him much material in sketches, photographs, and stereoscopic views."

A discussion of the use the artist made of photographs is too involved to enter upon here, but it is clear from more than one source that he relied greatly upon these, like many of his fellow artists of the time. His brothers, Charles and Edward, were successful photographers. The Crayon of January 1861 is interesting in this regard:

We would call the attention of admirers of photographs to a series of views and studies taken in the White Mountains, published by Bierstadt Brothers, of New Bedford, Mass. The plates are of large size and are remarkably effective, the artistic taste of Mr. Albert Bierstadt, who selected the points of view is apparent in them.

THE 1863 TRIP

We are given a clue to the date of the beginning of the 1863 trip by a line in the work which is the fullest source of information concerning it. Fitz Hugh Ludlow,"8 in The Heart of the Continent" records, "Just before I left New York . . . an artists' reception at Dodworth's."34

The New York Herald from April I to May 15, 1863, does not mention any event identifiable as "an artists' reception"-although the Herald apparently covered Dodworth's exhaustively. There was a musical there on April 21 and a benefit on April 25, in which the principal enter- tainments were humorous sketches. But on April I I, Ludlow spoke at the press preview of the National Academy exhibition35 and this may be the event referred to. If so, we may assume that he and Bierstadt left New York April 12 or 13, and took about five days to arrive at Atchison, Kansas.8" This would place the travelers in Atchison about April 18.

But the first date of the journey we know for certain is May 29, 1863, when the men left Comstock's Ranch after the buffalo hunting days (Ludlow, p. IoI). Since the Comstock Ranch was not more than a day and a half from Atchison, we would be left with nearly six weeks in Atchison and on the ranch-which is unlikely. Thus Ludlow's "just before" for his "artists' reception" is perhaps inacceptable.

At any rate, after a stay in Atchison (during which they saw a lynching)"7 they traveled suc- cessively to Seneca, Guittard's, Marysville (where they forded the Big Blue), Seventeen Mile

32. For a bibliography on Ludlow, see Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., 1953?, Union Worthies/Number Eight.

33. New York, 1870, p. 250. Ludlow's account of this Western journey began in the Atlantic Monthly for April 1864, and continued in the Atlantic in June 1864, July 1864, December 1864 and was enlarged and revised--chiefly by the addition of a long account of the first stage of the trip and an account of the Mormons-in The Heart of the Con- tinent. Trump, op.cit., p. 8o, implies that The Heart of the Continent had appeared in its entirety in the Atlantic, but this is not correct. He also wonders why Ludlow omits Bier- stadt's name in I870o-hardly a surprise, since the artist had married Ludlow's wife four years previously, shortly after her divorce from Ludlow.

34. Dodworth's Hall was at 8o6 Broadway, New York. It was frequently used for benefits and similar occasions.

35. New York Evening Post, April 13, 1863. 36. My estimate is based on a study of the following time-

tables: the Pennsylvania Railroad to Pittsburghi the Crest Line Railroad to Cincinnati; the Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad to St. Louis; the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad to St. Joseph; and the Platte Company Railroad to Atchison. Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859, New York, 186o, pp. 4ff., supplies an interesting account of the railroad and steamship route he used to St. Joseph at that time.

37. Ludlow, op.cit., p. 4.




Point, Virginia City (Nebraska) and, finally, on the Little Blue, Comstock's Ranch. The buffalo hunt started southward from here, within sight of White Rock Buttes"8 on the

banks of the Republican. Here we find the first reference to Bierstadt's work (Ludlow, p. 50): "After dinner [i.e., at noon] the artist opened his colorbox, and began making a study of the

antelope head, which had been left entire for his purpose." And on p. 56: "It was long after sunset when we got back to camp. Our artist had made two or three studies of game and horses."

Bierstadt did not participate in the hunt itself, since he "had seen enough" of that sport:"

Our artist, though a good shot, and capable of going to market for himself whenever there was any game, as well as most people, had seen enough buffalo-hunting on other expeditions to care little for it now, com- pared with the artistic opportunities which our battue afforded him for the portraits of fine old bulls. He accordingly put his color-box, camp-stool, and sketching umbrella into the buggy, hitched a team of wagon- horses to it, and, taking one of our party in with him, declared his intention of visiting the battle-field solely as our "special artist."

The "clean board pinned in the cover of his color-box" in the following passage"4 tells us both the size of the color-box and the reason for the great number of Bierstadt's 14" x 19" works:

I stood admiring him and felicitating Thompson,4" when MungerP appeared upon a distant divide, beckoning me to him. I left the dead bull, and rode to ask what was wanted. When I got within ear-shot Munger hollowed his hand before his mouth and roared, "Bring along your painter." Glad to be of more use to somebody than I had been to myself, I set out in search of the buggy. About a mile away I found it rolling placidly along through the grass, after the well-meaning but veteran wagon-team. I told our artist that Munger had something for him. At the news the buggy axles creaked joyfully; the little old horses sprang forward on a gallop, with all the recalled freshness of their youth ....

[Munger] had ridden upon as big a bull as ever ran the Plains, stopped him with a series of shots from a Colt's army revolver, and was holding him at bay in a grassy basin, for our artist's especial behoof. He, on his part, did not need three words to show him his opportunity. He leapt from the buggy; out came the materials of success following him, and in a trifle over three minutes from his first halt, the big blue umbrella was pointed and pitched, and he sat under it on his camp-stool, with his color-box on his knees, his brush and palette in hand, and a clean board pinned in the cover of his color box.

Munger's old giant glowered and flashed fire from two great wells of angry brown and red, burning up like a pair of lighted naphtha-springs, through a foot-deep environment of shaggy hair. The old fellow had been shot in half a dozen places. He was wounded in the haunch, through the- lower ribs, through the lungs, and elsewhere. Still he stood his ground like a Spartacus. He was much too distressed to run with the herd; at every plunge he was easily headed off by a turn of Munger's bridle; he had trampled a circle of twenty feet diameter in his sallies to get away, yet he would not lie down. From both his nostrils the blood was flowing, mixed with glare and foam. His breath was like a blacksmith's bellows. His great sides heaved laboriously, as if he were breathing with his whole body. I never could be enough of a hunter not to regard this as a distressing sight. Yet I could understand how Parrhasius might have been driven by the devil of his genius to do the deed of horror and power which has come down to us through the centuries. I seemed to see Prometheus on his rock, defying the gods. Kill a deer, and he pleads with you out of his wet, dying eye; a bear falls headlong with a grunt, and gives up his stolid ghost without more ado, if the bullet is mortal; but here was a monster whose body contained at least four deathly bullets, yet who stood as unflinching as adamant, with his face to the foe. It was the first time I had seen moral grandeur in a brute.

Munger, Thompson and I rode slowly round the bull, attracting his attention by feigned assaults, that our artist might see him in action. As each of us came to a point where the artist saw him advance side- ways, the rider advanced his horse and menaced the bull with his weapon. The old giant lowered his head till his great beard swept the dust; out of his immense fell of hair, his eyes glared fiercer and redder; he drew in his breath with a hollow roar and a painful hiss, and charged madly at the aggressor. A mere twist of the rein threw the splendidly trained horse out of harm's way, and the bull almost went headlong with his unspent impetus. For nearly fifteen minutes, this process was continued, while the artist's hand and eye followed each other at the double-quick over the board. The signs of exhaustion increased with every charge of the bull; the blood streamed faster from wounds and nostrils; yet he showed no signs of sur- render, and an almost human devil of impotent revenge looked out of his fiery, unblinking eyeballs.

38. I have not found these on the maps available to me, but Ludlow said they were visible "many miles to the southwest" from six miles-plus south of Comstock's.

39. Ibid., p. 62. 40. Ibid., pp. 66ff. 4x. The professional hunter of the group. 42. An Overland Mail Company official.




But our Parrhasius was merciful. As soon as he had transferred the splendid action of the buffalo to his

study, he called on us to put an end to the distress, which, for aught else but art's sake, was terrible to see. All of us who had weapons drew up in line, while the artist attracted the bull's attention by a final feigned assault. We aimed right for the heart and fired. A hat might have covered the chasm which poured blood from his side when our smoke blew away. All the balls had sped home; but the unconquerable would not fall with his side to the foe. He turned himself painfully around on his quivering legs; he stiffened his tail in one last fury; he shook his mighty head, and then, lowering it to the ground, concentrated all the life that lasted in him for a mad onset. He rushed forward at his persecutors with all the elan of his first charges; but strength failed him half way. Ten feet from where we stood, he tumbled to his knees, made heroic efforts to rise again, and came up on one leg; but the death-tremor possessed the other, and with a great panting groan, in which all of brute power and beauty went forth at once, he fell prone on the trampled turf, and a glaze hid the anger of his eyes. Even in death those eyes were wide open on the foe, as he lay grand, like Caesar before Pompey's statue, at the feet of his assassins.

We then returned to Thompson's bull, where our artist sat down to make another study, leaving the

buggy to return to camp and send out a wagon for our meat, and ourselves to set forth in search of new adventures.

Ludlow's book is illustrated with a number of wood engravings, presumably after sketches by

Bierstadt, and some of these may be assigned to this time: Antelopes; Buffalo Calves; Buffalo

Charge; Comstock's Ranch; Jean Baptiste Moncrevid (Fig. 8);" Portrait of Comstock (Fig. 9);" Prairie Dogs; and Wolves Attacking a Wounded Buffalo.

The travelers left Comstock's at i i P.M. on May 30 on the Overland Coach, rode forty miles

along the Little Blue (via three stations: Little Blue, Liberty Farm, and Lone Tree), had

breakfast at Thirty-two Mile Creek, crossed Pawnee Creek, "a shallow affluent of the Blue,"'" and after another thirty-two miles (Thirty-two Mile Creek had its name from this fact) arrived

at Fort Kearney on the Platte.

About halfway from Thirty-two Mile Creek, on the way to Fort Kearney, they passed a wagon train of German emigrants on the way to Oregon, and the two works entitled Emigrants Crossing the Plains (or The Oregon Trail)'6 seem to have been directly stimulated by this sight:"'

About two o'clock, we passed a very picturesque party of Germans going to Oregon. They had a large herd of cattle and fifty wagons, mostly drawn by oxen, though some of the more prosperous "outfits" were attached to horses or mules. The people themselves represented the better class of Prussian or North German peasantry. A number of strapping teamsters, in gay costumes, appeared like Westphalians. Some of them wore canary shirts and blue pantaloons; with these were intermingled blouses of claret, rich warm brown and the most vivid red. All the women and children had some positive color about them, if it only amounted to a knot of ribbons, or the glimpse of a petticoat. I never saw so many bright and comely faces in an emigrant train. One real little beauty who showed the typical German blonde through all her tan, peered out of one great canvas wagon cover, like a baby under the bonnet of the Shaker giantess, and coqueted for a moment with us from a pair of wicked-innocent blue eyes, drawing back, when the driver stared at her, in nicely simulated confusion. Several old women, of less than the usual anile hideousness of the German Bauerinn, were trudging along the road with the teamsters, in short blue petticoats and ever- lasting shoes; partly to unbend their joints, as was evident from the pastime alacrity of their gait, and partly to oversee a crowd of children who were hunting green grass with sickles, and conveying their scanty harvest to the cattle by handfuls at a time. In the wagons all manner of domestic bliss was going on. A young teamster, whose turn it was to ride, sat smoking a pipe and wooing his bashful dear, thus uniting business and pleasure in an eminent degree, under the shadow of a great wagon top, and on a barrel of mess pork. Many mothers were on front seats, nursing their babies in the innocent unconsciousness of Eve. Old men lay asleep on bales of bedding, with their horn spectacles still astride the nose; old women,

43. A Frenchman, educated in Paris, who lost his sanity over the death of his wife, recovered it, went West with Audubon, remained there and became conversant with many Indian languages. He was staying at the Comstock Ranch when Ludlow and Bierstadt found him such excellent company.

44. The portraits of Moncrivie and Comstock point up what has often been said of Bierstadt, that his figure painting was inferior.

45. But there appears to be no Pawnee Creek near the

Little or Big Blue. Further along, between Spring Hill and Lincoln, a Pawnee Creek empties into the South Platte. Lud- low's notes may be confused here.

46. Two such canvases are known, closely similar except in size: one in the Butler Museum, Youngstown, Ohio, perhaps made for the lithographer (Fig. 1oi see Appendix, No. 44) i the other in the American Automobile Association, Cleveland (Fig. x i see Appendix, No. 45).

47. Ludlow, op.cit., pp. ixo-ixz.




with similar aids, read great books of theoretical religion, or knitted stockings of the practical kind. Every wagon was a gem of an interior such as no Fleming ever put on canvas, and every group a genre piece for Boughton. The whole picture of the train was such a delight in form, color, and spirit, that I could have lingered near it all the way to Kearney.

This may be coupled with the "scenario" of the canvas in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin of November 27, 1867:

On the right rises a tall rock precipice, which extends far into the dusty distance. The broad wagon road winds through the middle over slightly undulating ground, strewn with the ghastly skeletons of cattle, and with the wreck of abandoned property. At each side of the road are small grassy plots and clumps of timber with pools or rivulets of water. The long line of emigrant wagons with attendant horsemen and small droves of sheep and cattle, are evidently passing one of the oases of "the plains." Indeed a portion of the train has turned off to the right to camp for the night. The remains of a previous fire are burning yet to the left. Other wagons are pressing on to make a further station, the oxen, cows, sheep and horses moving by reluctantly and wearily, some of the sheep panting with heat and fatigue, and all the animals lagging wearily. Women are visible in one canvas covered wagon, out of which looks a man, probably an invalid, who talks with a horseman behind. Some distance forward is an Indian encampment. Beyond the tops of several wagons loom above the line of the horizon. A fine group of trees fills the left hand, growing widely apart, and showing but scanty foliage, but strong of limb and huge of trunk. The sun pours his evening beams straight through the grove, gives a ruddy glow to the rocky cliffs on the right, transmutes the dust and haze of the perspective to a rich bronze, and warms the whole scene with his ardor. The day has evidently been a hot one, and the weary tug and strain of the oxen who pull the loaded wagons, shows how much they have felt it. The horsemen and footmen are full of character. They are agricul- tural, not mining emigrants, and the words painted on the family wagon show they are bound for Oregon.

Also at some point along this trail, sketches must have been made for several more works: Indians on the Move, The Overland Mail8 and The Overland Mail Coach (Fig. 12), the first and third being illustrations for The Heart of the Continent. Later elaborate treatments of buffalo subjects, such as Buffalo Trail: the Impending Storm and The Last of the Buffalo series

(The Last of the Bufalo; Indians and Buffalo [sic: there is only one Indian in the work];" and The Last of the Buffalo) may well have had their starting point here, although they were painted many years later, combined with sketches made of the Wind River country,50 and are possibly the composite product of the 1859 and 1863 trips (Fig. 13).

The trail continued overland through Plum Creek Station, Willow Island (June I), Midway Station, Cottonwood, Fremont Springs, Alkaline Lake, Diamond Springs, Spring Hill, Bear Creek Station, Bijou, and Junction. At Junction, Ludlow says, "we left the Platte and took a cut-off to Fremont's Orchard." From Fremont's Orchard he traveled to Eagle's Nest and into Latham. His language now seems to suggest that he and Bierstadt have parted company. ("I abandoned the stage which had brought me"-my italics). This, together with his later statement about the arrival in Denver: "I met some of our party .... They had reached Denver, as we

expected, just a day before me [my italics]," suggests that Bierstadt and Ludlow separated at Bear Creek Station (near Fort Morgan in the map of 1867; see note 21) and Ludlow himself

kept to the Platte on the way into Latham while actually describing Bierstadt's course away from the Platte as his own (see Fig. 28). Surely, after a year, a trip of about thirty miles among thousands in monotonous country may not have been remembered exactly.

48. According to Zeitschrift fiir bildende Kunst, 1870, p. 73, exhibited in the first show of the Cincinnati Fine Arts Academy. I have been unable to locate a catalogue of this show.

49. See Appendix, No. x6o. Also called Buffalo Hunter (Art News, December 30, 1930) and Indian Buffalo Hunt (Arts, September 1956). This work, a study for the large The Last of the Buffalo canvases, shows the protagonist of the work, the large figure of the Indian, on a rearing white horse, plunging a spear into a charging buffalo.

50. According to a pamphlet by Henry Guy Carleton in my possession, written on the occasion of the large canvas' appearance in 1889, when it was offered-and rejected-for the exhibition of American art at the Paris Exposition of that year. My own impression of the background suggests a Green River, Wyoming, locale. The Whitney Gallery in Cody, Wyoming, has a closely similar work, without, as perhaps the single most important difference, the standing buffalo at the left (see Appendix, No. 167).




In Denver, their transportation having been arranged by the then governor of Colorado, Evans, the party traveled south to Pike's Peak and the Garden of the Gods. Here studies were made for [The Rocky Mountains] Among the Rocky Mountains,5 [The Rocky Mountains] Land-

scape," A Rocky Mountain Scene," Rocky Mountains, and Morning in the Rocky Mountains.1

Ludlow speaks of the disappointment of their friends at Bierstadt's not choosing the Garden of the Gods for a "big picture":"

It was a great disappointment to some of our kind friends that our artist did not choose the Garden of the Gods for a "big picture." It was such an interesting place in nature that they could not understand its unavailability for art. . . . Everywhere we went we found the same ideas prevailing, and had to be on our guard against enthusiasm, lest we should waste time in getting at the "most magnificent scenery in the world" . . . which, however impressive it might be . . . was absolutely incommunicable by paint and

canvas, when the attempt to convey it, being simply the imitation of an imitation, must have looked either like a very poor castle, or a mountain put up by an association of stone-masons. But the artist's selective faculty is not to be looked for among practical men.

Before leaving Denver on June 23, Bierstadt made sketches for Denver, Colo." and [Colorado; Mount Rosalie (?) Mount Evans (?) Mount Warren (?)] Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mount Rosalie (or Storm in the Rocky Mountains or Storm in the Colorado Valley)" (Fig. I5)-

We are somewhere in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, at a place in Colorado Territory, about eighty miles from Denver City. We are at a height of a few hundred feet from the level of a lake below us. This lake, which is small and very beautiful, receives a stream from another lake, on a considerably higher level, and at a distance of several miles. We see this second lake distinctly across the barrier of rock that separates the two, and over the barrier we see the little river falling in a cascade. Over the distant lake broods an immense mass of dark storm-cloud, and we see the distant shore, the base of some mountain, in a darkness like coming night. The cloud soon attracts our attention, because it is so terrible; and, towards its toppling summit, so elaborate. Above these summits is a glimpse of almost pure blue sky, with fragments of cloud, light and torn. In the high blue heaven there is something white, which we know by its form to be a mountain crest, and near this, but less easily distinguished, is a second crest. In the middle distance the rocky barrier between the two lakes rises to a great elevation at the right, and a still nearer mass, also to the right, fills the field of vision in that direction. Just under this, in the right corner, is a little

pool of transparent mountain water, and further from us a stream rushes down the steep slope of the rock into the lake below. On top of these rocks, to the right, the storm is just beginning to gather in

51. The name of a work sold at a Leeds & Miner sale at the last auction of the season (New York Evening Post, May 21, 1864).

52. Perhaps the same work as the preceding. A "Land-

scape" identified by the New York Herald of April 15, 1864, as being of the Rocky Mountains was a Bierstadt exhibit at the Academy show of 1864. Although a sale on May 31 may seem a bit early for a work first shown on April x5, it is not unlikely at this time when Bierstadt was at the height of his

popularity. 53. Known to me only through an engraving opposite p.

302 in A. D. Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi, Hartford, x867. It shows two Indians standing beside a wigwam on the banks of a lake, two horses grazing nearby, rocky (but not

snow-capped) mountains in the distance, and a rather heavily forested landscape.

54. The only mention I have found of this work is in Zeitschrift fir bildende Kunst, 1870, p. 72, which gives the size as 25" x 142" (considering the subject matter, presumably a horizontal format) and describes it as: "In the fore-

ground a vast span of meadows, spotted with tree clumps. Deer . . . In the background mountains . . . silver tone."

55. Op.cit., p. I8o. 56. A view across what may be the city of Denver. Bier-

stadt was in Denver again during the Christmas holidays of

I876-77, in connection with his work for the Earl of Dunraven (see Brand Book of the Denver Westerner, 1956, p. 357, where, for the first time so far as I know, the correct account of Bierstadt's Long's Peak episode is told, nearly all

others having placed the visit in 1873 or thereabouts). Some reenforcement of the position that this work is not the product of the '76-'77 trip is given by the fact that there is no snow in this work and the Denver Times of December 27, 1876 indicates a heavy snowfall for Denver for Christmastime of 1876.

57. This, now untraceable, was one of the most celebrated of Bierstadt's works. It was bought for $35,000, chromolithographed by Kell Bros., London (a copy of which, curiously initialed "A. B." but apparently not by the artist-they are not monogrammed, as was his custom, with five or six brush strokes--is in the New York Public Library); Fig. x5. Tuckerman, it will be noted, does not refer to the figures seen in the illustration, which suggests that the artist may have made a smaller work for the lithographer: this appears also to be the case with [The Yosemite Valley] Domes of the Yosemite and [Nebraska] Emigrants Crossing the Plains (or The Oregon Trail).

Bernard de Voto (Across the Wide Missouri, New York, 1947, PP. 56-57) has an interesting discussion of this mountain complex about the source of the Green/Colorado River. And John Lathrop Jerome Hart, Fourteen Thousand Feet; A History of the Naming and Early Ascents of the High Colorado Peaks, Denver, 1925, p. 8, discusses this very nomen- clature. William Newton Byers, Magazine of Western History, xI, No. 3, January 1890, pp. 237ff., a Denver editor of the time, describes his ushering Bierstadt to Idaho Springs, Colo- rado, for the sketches for this work.




shreds of settling mist. Near the little pool, and on the sloping pasture land in the foreground, are groups of many trees, and an alluvial plain near the lake is watered by a winding river, on whose banks grow beautiful clusters of wood."8

On June 23, Bierstadt and Ludlow left Denver and traveled northward to Latham, where

they waited for the westward stage and Bierstadt sketched Colorado Arapahoe Indians. They left Latham at about Io P.M., forded the South Platte, and "came feverishly into the dawn

during our first severely mountainous climb, along the bed of the Cache-le-Poudre--one of the most beautiful mountain torrents . . . the most mysteriously seductive of streams to an artist."

Camp Halleck, Virginia Dale, the Laramie Plain (where they saw Laramie Butte), the Medicine Bow Mountains ("under whose snows we shall shiver to-morrow") and the Uintah Mountains followed in progression. It is interesting to note that they had been given a letter from a New York friend who was the brother of the Overland superintendent. It directed the stage employees to afford "every facility for stopping to sketch . . . which did not involve exorbitant delay of

the mail . . . to halt half an hour at a time-whenever we wished it to facilitate our scientific

examination and notes, the taking of sketches. . " Cooper's Creek, Elk Mountain, the North Platte ford, Sage Creek, Bridger's Pass, the Green

River (soon after daylight on, apparently, June 27, I863) and Fort Bridger were next. They soon entered Echo and Weber River Canyons, where studies for [Utah; Weber River Canyon]69 may have been made.

Into Salt Lake City on, apparently, June 28,"6 they were treated royally by Brigham Young and his followers. About the Fourth of July, they visited the Great Salt Lake, where studies

(or the finished canvas) for [Utah] The Great Salt Lake"' (Fig. 14) were made. Back in the

city, [Utah] Salt Lake City [Wahsatch] Mountains-[ Uintah] Range" may have come into being. The travelers left Salt Lake City some time shortly after the Fourth of July and traveled

through the terrible desert south and west of Great Salt Lake in one of the worst times of the

year for such a journey (see Fig. 28). This is described in the Atlantic Monthly of April 1864-

along with the delicious arrival at Lake Tahoe:

From Salt Lake to Washoe and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the road lies through the most horrible desert conceivable by the mind of man . . . alkali, white as the driven snow . . . in one uninterrupted sheet . . . I look back on that desert as the most frightful nightmare of my existence. ...

About four o'clock [on the first day out from Salt Lake] we entered a terrible defile . . . great, black, barren rocks of porphyry and trachyte [3oo' high]. ... There were ten rifles in our party . . two miles an hour. . .. In the middle of the defile stood an overland station. . . . The next stage was twenty miles long [This station was burnt by Goshoot Indians, 6 men murdered, I2-15 horses were "roasting" ... Ioo miles to] Ruby Valley, at the foot of the Humboldt Mountains....

We reached Washoe with our very marrows almost burnt out by sleeplessness . . . at Virginia City [a warm bath, three days]. Just across the boundary [of California] we sat down on the brink of glorious Lake Tahoe . . . a crystal sheet of water. Here, virtually at the end of our overland journey,

58. Tuckerman, op.cit., p. 394. 59. The only knowledge we have of this work is from a

letter, in a private collection, of November 5, 1873, from the Duke of Manchester to Mrs. Bierstadt: "I saw and admired Mr. Bierstadt's picture in Chicago, and was able to justify the bright coloring in the fore ground when it was criticized- for I have seen the same effect in the Weber Canon."

6o. Ludlow says it took six days from Denver, which would make it June 29, but it works out to June 28.

61. This work shows two swimmers floating in the water, apparently intended to represent Ludlow and Bierstadt, and brings us very close to the language Ludlow used in the Atlantic Monthly, April 1864: "The lake from which the city takes its name is about twenty miles distant by a good road across the level valley . .. [the bottom was] bluer than the eternal blue of the ocean . . . I swam out-then lay upon my back on rather than in, the water. . . . I was blown [by

the wind] to a spot where the lake was only four inches deep, without grazing my back." The outside figures may be Bierstadt and Ludlow, but the central figure appears to be a woman.

62. See Appendix, No. 72. The importance of the careful recording of canvas markings is exemplified here. This canvas had been backed before it came to Mr. Bartfield, and a tran- scription already made of what must have been Bierstadt's inscription: "Salt Lake City Nahsatot [sic] Mountains - Nintabe [sic] Range." It took little imagination to realize that the "N" and the "o" of "Nahsatot" should be "W" and "c" respectively; and that the "N" and "b" of "Nintabe" should be "U" and "h"-with the "e" of "Nintabe" an extra fillip in the face of scholarship. Another dealer on another occasion had made "Yosemite Galt" out of "Yosemite Fall."




since our feet pressed the borders of the Golden State, we sat down to rest, feeling that one short hour, one little league, had translated us ... into heaven.

At Lake Tahoe, Lake Tahoe may have had its inception; this may have been the same Lake Tahoe described by Zeitschrift fiir bildende Kunst, 1870, as having been sold at auction in March of 1867 for $18oo. Attack of Panther, an illustration in The Heart of the Continent, could have been inspired during this trip.

The two men arrived in San Francisco on July 17, 1863, and put up at the Occidental Hotel,"8 the equal of which Ludlow had never seen "even in New York . . . for elegance of appointment, attentiveness of servants or excellence of cuisine."" But the glories of the Occidental did not dis- tract the travelers from what seems to have been their primary California objective-the Yosemite

Valley. And on August I, the San Francisco Alta reported, under "Interior Items," "The Stock- ton papers mention the transit through that town of the author, Fitzhugh [sic] Ludlow and the artists Bierstadt, Williams and Perry,"6 on their way to Yosemite. They will have a jolly time of it."

Thus Bierstadt must have entered Yosemite about August 2, 1863. He left it about September 2o, if we are to believe what Ludlow tells us: that they spent seven weeks there. There is a con- tradiction here, for Ludlow says in the Atlantic Monthly of July 1864 that they "remained in San Francisco ... for more than a fort-night." We know"" that they left the city on September 24. Therefore, either Ludlow's "seven weeks" or his "more than a fort-night" is incorrect. It is, of course, possible that the August I Alta reported a Stockton item of some time previously, but this would be unusual. And the mystery is deepened by the fact that Ludlow reports in his June Atlantic Monthly piece that they were four days getting from Stockton to Mariposa, near the edge of Yosemite.

We know that the men were in Yosemite as of August 21, 1863. On that date Bierstadt wrote "Camp here August 21 1863" on Register Rock."' And an undated clipping in private hands reports the receipt of a letter from Yosemite dated August 23. During their stay studies were made for the Yosemite works which appear to have originated on this trip: [The Yosemite

Valley] Cho-looke, The Yosemite Fall;" In the Yosemite Valley; [The Yosemite Valley] Domes of the Yosemite;" [The Yosemite Valley] Looking Down Yosemite Valley;'" [The Yo-

63. San Francisco Alta, July 19, 1863. 64. Atlantic Monthly, June 1864. 65. Williams, whom Ludlow later calls "an old Roman,"

apparently referring to his association with Bierstadt in Rome, and Perry, whom he called "an ancient Diisseldorf friend," apparently referring to an association with Bierstadt in Diis- seldorf, were well-known San Francisco artists at this time.

66. From the Alta of September 25, 1863. See p. 346. 67. J. M. Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras, Oakland,

1866, p. 441. 68. This painting has been identified by Trump, op.cit.,

p. 2 8, as a view of the Bridal Veil Falls. It corresponds exactly to the "scenario" for Cho-looke, the Yo-Semite Fall, reproduced in The Heart of the Continent and described by the New York Evening Post, of January 9, 1864: ". . . an upright of a view in the Yo-Semite Valley, including the Great Fall, which, leaping from the brow of a precipice about whose crest the clouds rest in thick, dark folds, drops in two descents into the sunshiny valley two thousand eight hundred feet below. In the foreground of the picture, sheltered from the setting sun by massive rocks, a party of travelers, which we may presume was the artist and his friends, is encamped, engaged in preparing the evening meal. Three or four horses are tethered near by, and a solitary horseman is driving as many more down to the water."

69. This is Bierstadt's largest known work. After having been bought by LeGrand Lockwood, this painting was sold to Fairbanks, of the Fairbanks scale-making business, and

presented by him to his home town, St. Johnsbury, Vermont, apparently late in 1873. The San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin of January 29, 1874 quotes the Boston Globe as follows: "Bierstadt's famous picture, The Domes of the Yosem- ite, has had a curious history, and has just made its appearance in Court, only by proxy, however. It was originally sold for $30,000 but its owner Legrand Lockwood, first failed and then died, and it was sold at auction. It was bid off by A. S. Hatch, the New York banker for $5,o5o, but he says it was unexpectedly knocked down to him, and he concluded he did not want it. He accordingly left it with a dealer, whom he told, as he says, that if he could get anything like its real value, he might sell it, and he would pay him a liberal commission. It was on exhibition about a year, and finally a sale was negotiated through Mr. Hatch's brother to Mr. Fair- banks, the scale-maker, who wished to give it to his town of St. Johnsbury, Vt. On account of the object for which Mr. Fairbanks wanted the picture, it was sold to him for what Mr. Hatch paid for it. Here the dealer stepped in and claimed his commission and the Court has decided that he had not earned it. Now the Domes are doomed to the seclusion of a Vermont town, where it will astonish the natives." A smaller work, almost exactly identical in subject matter, is now in private hands. Again, as in the smaller version of Emigrants Crossing the Plains, it was apparently made for the lithographer.

70. In the 1865 National Academy show. According to the New York Times of June 13, it was a "large canvas" in




semite Valley; Looking Down Yosemite Valley];` [The Yosemite Valley] Merced River, Yosemite Valley; [The Yosemite Valley] Sentinel Rock, Yosemite; Yosemite-Sunset in the Rockies [sic];72 [The Yosemite Valley] Starr King Mountain, California (Fig. I6); [The Yo- semite Valley(?)] The Storm;73 [The Yosemite Valley] Valley of the Yosemite;74 [The Yo- semite Valley, Domes of the Yosemite] "Yosemite," California; [The Yosemite Valley] Yosemite

Fall-Cala; [The Yosemite Valley] The Yosemite Valley; [The Yosemite Valley; The Yosemite

Valley, El Capitan] (Fig. 17); " and [The Yosemite Valley] Yosemite Valley with Mirror Lake

in the Foreground (Fig. 18); the last two are closely related. While in San Francisco, making, as Ludlow says, "short excursions around and across the

bay," Bierstadt made studies for [California] The Golden Gate and [California] The Golden

Gate, San Francisco, which may or may not be the same work."7 [California] Old Mission, San Francisco" was also done at this time.

On September 24, I863, Ludlow and Bierstadt left for Oregon on the Sacramento boat:78

ARTIST AND AUTHOR.-Messrs. Bierstadt and Fitz Hugh Ludlow started yesterday for Oregon on the Sacramento boat. They take their horses by steam to Red Bluff, and thence they will ride past Shasta through the Klamath, Rogue, Umpqua, and Willamette Valleys. They will ascend the Columbia to the mouth of Snake River, then go down to the Cowlitz, there take to their saddles again, ride across to Puget Sound, and thence come to San Francisco by sea, touching at British Columbia if they have time. They arrived in the State about ten weeks ago, have spent a couple of weeks in San Francisco, and were two months in Yosemite Valley. Mr. Bierstadt has been very industrious, and has taken a multitude of sketches which, though made in six or eight hours each, have an excellence that would entitle them to rank with finished pictures. Indeed, several of them are great works of art. In sketching, it is admitted that Bierstadt has no equal in America. His sketches, however, are merely made as guides for pictures, which will require months, perhaps years, to complete, but when completed they will be master-pieces, valuable and enduring contributions to the artistic wealth of the world.

which: "Huge masses of rock rise up on every side, and through a notch wrought with the ceaseless waters of centuries the river passes. From this gigantic rift issues a flood of light, the fiery particles of the departing sun . .. [Bier- stadt] does not essay a generalization of the scenery of the "Yo Semite Valley" but contents himself with giving us, doubtlessly a correct, but still a positive survey of one par- ticular portion of it. The foreground, where the brimstone- dust rays of the sun fall upon it, is carefully finished, but the shaded part to the right, is hard, inelegant, cold and utterly commonplace as it generally is in all this artist's pictures. The river seems to us to be narrow, extremely swollen and 'too forward'. . . ."

71. A similar, possibly smaller, later work described by the San Francisco Chronicle of March 25, 1869 as follows: "Bierstadt has chosen the sunset hour, in which he has so often produced striking effects, for his interpretation. The mellow tints of the fading sunlight fall upon the pinnacle and rugged rocks, and through the hazy atmosphere brighten the foreground. And here it is that we find our first fault with the picture. The light is admirably handled and used with fine effect, but is it the light in which the Yosemite should be presented? To our eye, it is not. The very brightness seems inappropriate. The semi-tropical effect of the golden sunshine takes away from the dignity of the picture. The grand, majestic cliffs, their masculine strength and character seem rendered effeminate by the brilliant robe of light which is thrown over them. . . . The right of the . . . picture is the least satisfactory portion; it seems crude and unfinished. The intention is evident, but the artist has failed to convey the impression of an immediate wall of giant rock-work, whose outline and general conformation are alone perceptible through the hazy, uncertain atmosphere. In the left of the picture this is more than made up for in the artistic handling of light and shadow and the exquisite drawing. The foreground is especially fine. It is most elaborate in detail, con- sistent in grouping and one of the finest pieces of oil painting we have ever had the pleasure of looking at. There are minor errors in the reflection in the water of some trees, and in

other details, but they are of such small importance that they do not detract much from the merits of the piece.

... ."

72. It will be obvious that this title is self-contradictory, since the Yosemite Valley is not in the Rocky Mountains but in the Sierra Nevadas.

73. I have placed this in the Yosemite Valley group because the domed mountain in the far left looks like a Yosemite peak to me.

74. Apparently the "elaborately finished study" mentioned in the New York Evening Post, April 18 and 20, 1864.

75. I know this work only from an engraving in The Heart of the Continent.

76. They probably are. Bierstadt and Ludlow were part of Mrs. Fremont's salon while visiting San Francisco, and Bierstadt was commissioned to do a "Golden Gate" for Mrs.

Fremont. This was said to have cost the Fremonts $4,ooo (Allan Nevins, Fremont, Pathmarker of the West, New York, 1939, p. 594), and to have been painted from an easel set up in front of the Fremont house (Ruth Gillette Hardy, Appalachia, June 1950; Van Wyck Brooks, The Times of Melville and Whitman, E. P. Dutton, New York, 953, p. 267). A Golden Gate, 412" x 651/2" and dated 1865, was sold at auction in New York in 1945 at the Kende Galleries. The Fremont work was said by Trump, op.cit., from un- specified sources--since he had not seen the 41Y/2" x 65y/2" canvas--to be the same size and have the same date.

77. A crayon (or watercolor?) of this title was sold at the Thompson sale in New York in 1870 (see Catalogue Executrix's Sale of Mr. Thomas Thompson's Collection . . . Monday, Feb. 7th, 1870). This should not be confused with Palm Tree with a Domed Church in the Karolik collection of the Boston Museum of the Fine Arts. According to the 1949 catalogue of that collection, this work "may well have been painted in the American Southwest," but Bierstadt seems never to have visited the American Southwest. And according to a letter from Miss Ninfa Valvo, Curator of Paintings of the M. H. De Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, the painting is neither of San Francisco nor of Southern California.

78. San Francisco Alta, September 25, 1863.



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8. Jean Baptiste Moncrivie, wood engraving after Bierstadt (?), from Fitz Hugh Ludlow,

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9. Portrait of Comstock, wood engraving after Bierstadt (?), from Ludlow, op.cit.

io. Bierstadt, [Nebraska] Emigrants Crossing the Plains (or The Oregon Trail) Youngstown, Ohio, Butler Museum

11. Bierstadt, [Nebraska] Emigrants Crossing the Plains (or The Oregon Trail)



12. The Overland Mail Coach, wood engraving after Bierstadt (?), from Ludlow, op.cit. I3. Bierstadt, The Last of the Buffalo. Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art

14. Bierstadt, [Utah] The Great Salt Lake. Portland, Oregon, Museum

15. [Colorado; Mount Rosalie? Mount Evans? Mount Warren?] Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mount Rosalie (or Storm in the Rocky Mountains or Storm in the Colorado Valley),

chromolithograph after Bierstadt. New York Public Library, Print Division



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16. Bierstadt, [The Yosemite Valley] Starr King Mountain, California Cleveland Museum of Art, Hinman B. Hurlburt Collection

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28. Bierstadt's itinerary west of the Missouri River in 1859 and 1863. The 1859 route is shown by a broken line, the 1863 route by a dotted line. The 1859 route between Troy and the Platte and westward from the Wind River Mountains is uncertain, as is the 1863 route between Fort Ruby

and Virginia City. Not all the places referred to in the text are indicated.




They traveled to Tehama, Red Bluffs (sometimes called Red Bluff at the time), Buckeye, Dry Creek, Castle Rock (Shasta County), Soda Springs (Siskiyou County), Strawberry Valley (there is a delightful account of their stay here in the shade of Mount Shasta in The Heart of the Conti- nent and the Atlantic Monthly of July 1864), Yreka, and finally to the Oregon border via Cottonwood. Some time before Oregon, studies for other works appear to have been made: Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains;" Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains; s [Boat on lake, boat on shore, distant volcanic peak with outlier, sunset];"8 The Heart of the Sierra Nevada;82 Mount Whitney;" The Sierra Nevada in

California;"• [The Sierra Nevada] The Sierra Nevada

Mountains, California;" and Sunset in California."8 While at Shasta, studies may have been made for the fine [California] Mount Shasta, now in the Oakland Art Museum (Fig. I•), although the artist traveled to Shasta in 88087" and may have painted the Oakland picture at that date. There is little doubt that the volcanic cone to the right in Fig. 19 is actually Shasta, with its familiar outlier. But it is certainly not the same peak as the Mount Shasta of the Union League Club.

In Oregon the two stayed in Portland a short while88 and traveled by steamer and railway portage up the Columbia River to The Dalles and Celilo. During this trip, probably, sketches were made for: [The Cascades] Mt. Adams; [The Cascades] Mt. St. Helen [sic];89 [The Cas- cades] Multnomah Falls; Mount Hood on the Columbia River; and [The Cascades] Mt. Hood

(Fig. 2o).9" Two "Mount Hoods" and a "Mount Shasta," all actually Mount Rainier, are illustrated in Figs. 21 and 22. The Mount Hood of Fig. 20 is apparently the real Hood. An interesting artistic comparison may be seen in a Hood by Gifford and a Shasta by Stanley, reproduced on p. 269 of The American Heritage Book of Natural Wonders, New York, 1963. The Union League's Shasta, with its Puyallup River foreground (Fig. 23)--geographically correct for a Mount

Tacoma--corresponds exactly to the scenario of a Mount Tacoma offered in Art Property . .. and

79. This is strongly reminiscent of the country around Shasta, if we may judge from the reproduction in the Burling- ton Magazine, c, No. 668, 1958, p. i.

80. Perhaps the same work as the preceding-it was so claimed in the Burlington Magazine advertisement. A work of this title was exhibited at the Royal Academy show in 1869.

8 1. My own title for a small oil at the Sloan Gallery, New York, signed and dated i868, which is reminiscent of the work referred to in note 79. The distant volcanic peak with outlier in this work and the work of note 79 are suggested by photos in the National Geographic Society's monograph, S. S. Diller, Mount Shasta, A Typical Volcano, October 1895. An 1855 lithograph opposite p. 26o of The Sierra Club Bulletin, xII, No. 3, 1926, is also curiously appropriate. In any case, a Black Hills locale for this work, suggested by the dealer, is impossible for a Bierstadt work of 1868.

82. With snow-capped peaks, two waterfalls, ducks, deer, and hunters encamped with the artist. Present location unknown. This work is called Among the Sierra Nevadas by Trump, op.cit., p. 156, who says it could be the Minneapolis Museum's Mount Whitney. But he cannot have seen the Min- neapolis work, since it is without ducks, has only one deer, and no human inhabitants. The Art-Journal (London) of August 1868 gives a full scenario and says the locale is in the heart of the Sierra Nevadas, part of the great range of the Andes [sic] "some three hundred miles to the east of San Francisco" -which would put it comfortably inside Nevada.

83. Since Bierstadt did not go near Mount Whitney until his next trip to the West, in x87x, and this mountain is not the Mount Whitney of the Minneapolis Institute or of the Corcoran Gallery's Mount Corcoran, the painting is im- properly named. A legend that this work was shown in Philadelphia during the artist's lifetime apparently has its

basis in the showing of [The Sierra Nevadas; Kings River and Mount Brewer] Autumn in the Sierras which was being exhibited in Philadelphia on March i9, 1874 (San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin of that date) and which was more than once confused with a Whitney--e.g., ibid., May 29, 1873. Henry Gannett, A Dictionary of Altitudes in the United States, 3rd ed., Government Printing Office, 1899, distinguishes Mounts Brewer and Whitney. Since Bierstadt was in Europe 1867-1869 and made numerous sketches in the Alps, Mount Whitney, now in the Newark Museum, and dated I869, is most naturally an Alpine scene.

84. Title from the review (Art-Journal, London, August 1868) of a work shown in the 1868 Royal Academy Exhibi- tion in Berlin.

85. A work of this title was shown in the 1870 National Academy show. It is quite possibly identical with the preceding.

86. Chromolithographed by Prang; woodcut engraving in undetermined location in The Aldine (see artist's file in the New York Public Library). I cannot reconcile the locale with the Yosemite. The San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin of August 20, 1869 gives us a scenario: "It depicts a lonely lake, its waters all aglow with the mildly bright rays of the setting sun, its desolate solitude unbroken, save by the straggling water-fowls that hover near the shore or rest on the rocks. To the right, rise precipitous mountains, their sides all radiant with the golden-hued sunshine: to the left, grow clumps of gigantic pines, the sombre beauty of which, by their contrast of color, makes the picture perfect."

87. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, July 17, r88o. 88. The Atlantic Monthly, December 1864, p. 704. 89. This should be "Mt. St. Helens." 90o. Mount Hood was seen by Bierstadt apparently from




important works in oil belonging to the estate of the late Edward Bierstadt [Albert's brother] . . . at the American Art Galleries [January 22 and 23, 1908 ]. The size, 54" x 84", is also approximate. Ludlow and Bierstadt returned to Portland and left that city on the "Pacific" on November 5, I863,"9 arriving in San Francisco some time before November 14, according to the A lta."9

After a busy, congenial time in San Francisco"9 they boarded the Pacific Mail Steamship Com- pany's "Constitution" on November 23 , arrived in Panama on December 5," crossed the Isthmus to Aspinwall the same day, and there boarded the "Champion" for New York the same after- noon." They arrived in New York on December 17.-"

THE 1871-1873 TRIP

This trip began about July 14, 1871. Bierstadt and his wife were reported by the San Francisco Alta of July 20, 1871 as having passed through Ogden, Utah, on the I8th-two days out of San

Francisco."8 A Bierstadt letter of May 17, 1871"" indicates that he had "collected" his wife in Waterville, New York (her home town) a few days previously. Another letter100 places Bierstadt in his New York studio on June 27, and one dated July 3, 187101" places him still in the city as of that date. The San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin of July 21, 1871, announced the Bierstadts' "artistic arrival":

ARTISTIC ARRIVAL.-Albert Bierstadt, the renowned landscape painter, arrived in this city last night, and is stopping at the Grand Hotel. He contemplates an extended professional trip on this Coast, during which he will make studies of some of the finest scenery for future use. A noted work of his, The Emerald Pool, will soon be on exhibition at the gallery of Snow & Roos.

By July 25 the artist was already leaving Sacramento "for a tour among the mountain lakes to sketch studies for new pictures.""'02 Meanwhile, his renowned [The White Mountains] The Emerald Pool and [Colorado] Storm in the Rocky Mountains were being exhibited at the locally most prominent art gallery, Snow and Roos, where they would attract patrons among the Cali- fornia rich.03' Bierstadt was back in the city by August 3:10"

A Whale sketch.-Mr. Bierstadt, the artist, now stopping in San Francisco, and who always chooses the grand in nature for subjects of his works, has just made a rapid, but admirably truthful sketch of the whale, washed ashore the other day, on the beach near Fort Point.

The artist was soon made the San Francisco Art Association's first honorary member,'05 and Leland Stanford bought the two Snow and Roos exhibits. Then the artist returned East "for a few weeks."

near where the Hood River flows into the Columbia near White Salmon, Washington-for at that point the peak is clearly sharp enough for our Mount Hood (see John H. Wil- liams, The Guardians of the Columbia, Tacoma, i912, p. 56), whereas from other points of view it is too blunt. Again, he may have sketched the peak from The Dalles. A statement in Scribner's Monthly, iii, No. 5, March I872, that an A. A. Low of Brooklyn owned a "Puget Sound" by Bierstadt is an error: the artist did not approach Puget Sound until years later. The Alta of September 25, 1863, reported that he planned to go to Puget Sound, but it is clear that he did not. The Scribner's writer's curious geography is evident from the following: "... went to Portland, thence to Willamette [sic: the artist went through the town of Willamette before he got to Portland], up the Columbia, over [sic] Fort Vancouver [sic: Fort Vancouver is downriver from Portland] to Dallas [he means "The Dalles"]. .. ."

91. San Francisco Alta, November 14, 1863. 92. Ibid., loc.cit. 93. Described in Van Wyck Brooks, op.cit., and The Golden

Era, San Francisco, November 22, 1863. 94. San Francisco Alta, November 22, 1863.

95. New York Herald, December 16, 1863. 96. New York Herald, December x7, 1863. 97. Ibid. 98. The trip via transcontinental railroad took six days:

(see San Francisco Evening Bulletin, October 21, x869): on July 18, the Bierstadts were two days away from San Francisco.

99. In the Manuscript Division of the New York Public Library.

Ioo. Ibid. 1oi. Ibid.

102. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, July 25, 1871. 103. Ibid., July 29, 1871. Trump (see note io), p. 136,

says, on the basis of a September 6, 1869 report in The Rocky Mountain News (Denver) that [Colorado] Storm in the Rocky Mountains was destroyed by a Philadelphia fire in 1869, but its appearance here belies this. Zeitschrift fiir bildende Kunst, 1870, p. 73, also reported that it was being shown in Europe in that year, i.e., 1870.

104. San Francisco Alta, August 3, 1871. See also San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin of the same date.

I05. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, August 7, 1871; also San Francisco Chronicle, August 8, 1871.




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i. The principal places visited by Bierstadt in California in 1871-18 73. The routes to the Yosemite, Hetch-Hetchy, Silver Mountain, etc., have not been indicated, since these are uncertain. The source of the Kern and Kings rivers varies widely on maps of the period, some showing a large lake, others a small lake or only a vast tule area.

Albert Bierstadt has gone East for a few weeks. .... It is understood that Leland Stanford is the fortunate possessor of the two fine paintings by Mr. Bierstadt which were first exhibited at the late Art Reception in this city. Our California railroad magnates are all gathering collections of paintings.f06

While Bierstadt was in the East, he arranged with General William T. Sherman for a buffalo hunt by the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia,'1o apparently while the Grand Duke was a guest at his Tarrytown home, "Malkasten." Alexis' visit may have been the reason for Bierstadt's return to the East. The same letter said that "we ought to start for McPherson1o' by the ioth of Decem- ber at least," and it is logical to assume that Bierstadt accompanied his guest as far as the Buffalo hunt headquarters'" on the return to the West Coast. At any rate we know he had gotten back

io6. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, September 18, I871.

Io7. Letter from Sherman to Bierstadt of November 25, x871, now in the possession of Bierstadt's grandnephew.

to8. Fort McPherson is at the separation of the North and

South Forks of the Platte. Io9. See Mid-America, 43, No. 3, July 1961, pp. x64-181,

for a description of this buffalo hunt.




to San Francisco by January 6, 1872, for on that day the Bulletin reported that he had "returned here to stay a long time."

He attended the Art Association Reception on January 16, 1872110 with numerous other celebrities and "the attendance kept up to a late hour."

By February 24 he was getting a very early start at sketching Yosemite, for the Bulletin reported on March 5 that he had entered the Valley via Haight's Cove and the canyon of the Merced "ten days ago." On March 5 the Bulletin indicated that he was after snow scenery and had already made a good start on [The Sierra Nevadas] Donner Lake from the Summit (Fig. 27):

As the spring advances, and nature in California is putting on her most lovely garniture of verdure and flowers, the artists are preparing for sketching tours. Albert Bierstadt, who has taken up his residence in this State for some months, is first in the field. With characteristic enterprise, he has pushed into the Yosemite Valley this early-nearly three months in advance of ordinary tourists--to make sketches of the winter aspects of its unequalled scenery, when the peaks and cliffs are covered with snow, and the falls tumble amid icicles and ice-sheeted rocks. He entered the valley ten days ago, by way of Haight's Cove, and the canon of the Merced river, and will spend considerable time there. Since Mr. Bierstadt came to the State, last fall, he has made numerous local studies, in color, and very much in detail, of scenes about the Bay of San Francisco and in the Sierra. He contemplates painting a series of pictures of California scenery, which shall be literally faithful. He has made many careful studies for an important picture for C. P. Huntington of the Central Pacific Railroad . . .

Back in San Francisco before the first of May, Bierstadt busied himself with sketches in the Bay area, including studies on the Farallon Islands. [California] Seal Rocks, Farallones,"' Faral- lone Islands,112 and [California] Seal Rock (Fig. 24) may have resulted from the excursion described by the Bulletin on May 2, 1872: "Mr. Bierstadt returned from the Faralones yesterday. He has procured sketches for a marine painting of the Isles.

... ."

By May 24, the artist had already returned to Yosemite, for on that day he registered in the Mountain View House in the Valley: "May 24, I 872. A. Bierstadt,""' and on June 6 the Bulletin reported that he had been to Mount Whitney: "Mr. Bierstadt has gone to the Yosemite region from Mount Whitney at last accounts." By June 17, A Winter Scene, from the collection of D. O. Mills, was on exhibit at the Art Association."' This was also called [The Yosemite Valley] Cathedral Rock in the Winter.'15

The artist returned to San Francisco for a short time about September 4, but by September 13 had returned to the South Sierras and the Mount Whitney region."' The Bulletin of September 4 reported that he had "lately returned temporarily to the city from a long field experience in the King's river country, under the shadow of Mount Whitney. He will go back there shortly." According to the Bulletin of September 13, he had left San Francisco "for another trip to the high Sierras in Southern California to further enrich his portfolio with sketches . . .of

that

region." By October I9, I872, he had returned to the city but soon left for the summit of the

Sierras-possibly to work further on his [The Sierra Nevadas] Donner Lake from the Summit and to produce [The Sierra Nevadas] At the Summit and [The Sierra Nevadas] Near the Summitt [sic], Cala (see Appendix, No. I2I).

By November 9, 1872, he had made another trip to this region:

x 0o. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, January 17, I872.

i i i. See Appendix, No. 126. On verso in artist's hand "Seal Farralone Is. Pacific 1872."

112. Sold, according to American Art Sales, ix, No. i, p. 3, for $50 in October 1928. Since the titles given in this publication are so inconclusive I have presented only a selec- tion of them.

113. Yosemite Nature Notes, vIII, 1929, p. 72.

I 4. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, June 17, 1872. xx 5. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, June

x9, 1872. Perhaps identical with [A Winter Snow Scene] believed to be by Bierstadt formerly in the Philadelphia Museum of Art5 it has been missing from the Museum since 1932, according to a letter of May 12, 1964 from the Director.

116. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, September 4 and 13, 1872.




Albert Bierstadt, since his return from the Kern river country, has made two trips to the Sierra in the vicinity of Donner Lake and Lake Tahoe, making studies for important works commissioned by Cali- fornians. He has accumulated a great quantity of fine material during his year's residence on this coast, and has exhibited great energy and industry in his pursuit of it among the rugged places of the Sierra Nevada. He will have a studio in this city during the winter . . .117

He may have remained in the Donner Lake area for a considerable time, since he was still there

on November 15,'8 and it was not until December 14 that the Bulletin reported that the Bier-

stadts "are in the city again"---conveying the impression that they had just returned. The Bulletin of December 18 reported that they would be in the city all winter and at the Occidental Hotel."9

On January 7, 1873 [The Sierra Nevadas] Donner Lake from the Summit was announced as soon to go on exhibit:

The members and patrons of the San Francisco Art Association will be glad to know that Mr. Bierstadt will, by Monday or Tuesday next, place on exhibition in the Gallery his great picture of Donner Lake from the Summit. Bierstadt has been engaged on this work for more than a year. He has made a great many elaborate studies for it during numerous excursions to the summit, and has aimed to make a careful tran- script of an actual scene. The point of view is near the line of the Central Pacific Railroad, Donner Lake lying some 1,500 feet below, embedded in a basin of gray granite and shaggy coniferous woods. The picture is likely to be very celebrated, and it is characteristic of Mr. Bierstadt to allow the first exhibition of it for the benefit of our local association. As it will be sent to New York by the 20oth of this month, it can remain at the Gallery only five or six days, so that those who desire to see it must not delay their visits. . ... Mr. Bierstadt's fine painting of Mount Hood is also to be sent east on the 20th.120

On January i i the Bulletin reported a visit to the artist's studio high on the Clay Street hill:

The studio wherein it was finished is a tall, slight frame house, especially built for him on the very top of Clay-street hill, and about 300 feet above sea level. This house, with its windows opening in every quarter, commands a magnificent view of the city below, and of the Bay, from the Golden Gate in the west to Mount Diablo in the east, including the whole sweep of its varied shore lines and studding islands. Here Mr. Bierstadt has been studying sunrise and sunset effects, in addition to finishing his magnum opus. The large window-as big as the side of the house-which gives him the north light painters always want, commands at one glance a view of the whole passage from the Pacific Ocean to the inner Bay, with the peninsular and Marin county shores, including Mount Tamalpais, a distance of six or seven miles. The light from other and smaller windows is shut off with curtains when not desired. Turning from the large one-which we may call a perpendicular skylight-and from the beautiful nature-picture it reveals, the visitor to Mr. Bierstadt's unique atelier sees on a canvass the picture produced by his art.

On February 17, 1873, the artist was "working upon a large winter view in Yosemite" and

"a study . . . of the red rocks at Farallone Islands."'1' He left on April 5 for Inyo County "for the purpose of sketching the wild scenery of that region."'22 The "wild scenery of that region" may have inspired: [The Sierra Nevadas] Cala. Owens Valley123 and [The Sierra Nevadas] Cala-Owens Valley. S. Sierra.'24 By April 16 the artist had gone into Tulare County and there

"engaged in a new painting of magnitude, the subject being the Head of King's River Tulare County."'25 [The Sierra Nevadas] Head of King's River, Tulare Countyl26 and [The Sierra Nevadas] King's River Canon Cal.'27 were results of this trip. Bierstadt returned from the Inyo- Tulare excursion on April 30.128

117. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, November 9, 1872.

i18. Ibid., November 15, 1872.

119. Ibid., December 30, 1872. 120. Ibid., January 7, 1873. 121. Ibid., February 17, 1873. 122. Ibid., April 7, 1873. 123. See Appendix, No. ioo. The verso of this work is

inscribed "Cala. Owens Valley/i872." Thurman Wilkins, Clarence King, New York, 1958, p. 16I, reports that King met Bierstadt in Owens Valley "by prearrangement" shortly after September 8, 1872.

124. See Appendix, No. Io1. Again the verso is inscribed by the artist "Cala Owens Valley. S. Sierra. 1871," but this may be improper recall: I do not believe that Bierstadt traveled to Inyo County as early as 1871.

125. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, April 16, 1873. 126. Title from this report. This might be the same work

that was reported to be (ibid., May 15, 1873) circa 4' x 6'. 127. See Appendix, No. I14. Inscribed on the verso, in

the artist's hand: "View in the Sierras by A. Bierstadt . . . King's River Canon, Cal."

128. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, April 30, 1873.




At the April 15 opening of the Art Association Exhibition the 4' x 6' Kings River view was shown along with another of the San Joaquin: [California] San Joaquin River."' Another San Joaquin view, including Mount Diablo--[California] Mt. Diablo from the San Joaquin River, California--may have come into existence at this time.

On May 28 in the Gallery of the Art Association, [The Sierra Nevadas; Kings River and Mount Brewer] Autumn in the Sierras went on view:

This picture, which is one of his large canvasses, six feet by ten, is named dutumn in the Sierra, rather as a key to some of its color, we fancy, than because the artist would not have preferred a title definitely locating the scene, which is an actual view on the headwaters of the south fork of King River with Mount Brewer in the distance. The landscape is a noble one. The narrow valley of the river, seen winding and foaming far below, while the peak rises 5,000 or 6,ooo feet higher. In the right hand foreground we have a precipitous descent of rock from a bold granite pinnacle, with standing fountains of snow water and a bounding cataract fed from the same, which leaps into a deep gorge leading to the river. On the edge of this gorge and among the crags near by grow some of the stunted cedars and contorted pines characteristic of the high Sierra, and around their mossy bases and up to the edges of the standing water, the scanty earth is reddened with the dwarf willow, which is peculiar to great elevations in the Sierra, and, only a few inches high, looks at a distance like the reddened grass around salt licks. Far below winds the river, and at left rises a mountain mass of granite, streaked with snow, whose meltings form lakelets in the depressions of the rock. In the perspective of the valley rises the grand bulk of Mt. Brewer, its serrated summit partly covered with snow.13o

This "scenario" does not describe [The Sierra Nevadas] Mount Corcoran,'"' [The Sierra Nevadas] Mount Whitney, or Mt. Whitney,182 the first two of which depict the same locale, and the last of which has a considerable amount of melodramatic human activity added.

The last notice we have of Bierstadt before his departure from California to return East perma- nently was taken by the Bulletin of July 26, I873: "[Bierstadt] has returned from the Sierras where he has been making some superb studies."

A considerable number of works resulting from this 1871-1873 western sojourn by Bierstadt may be placed, so far as we know, at more than one time during this period. Two works, dated

1872 by the artist, I believe to be a matter of improper recall: Utah 1872 and Wasatch Mountains near Ogden, Utah."'

There was a considerable number of works stimulated by the San Francisco area: [California] Bay of Monterey California; [California] Expedition under Vizcaino landing at Monterey z6o;134 [California] Point Lobos Monterey [sic] California;`"" [California; San Rafael, Cali-

fornia]; 3" [California] San Rafael, California; [California] Near San Rafael California;`7' and

Napa Valley, California.'"'

129. Known to me only from this report. The Chronicle May 16 report of this exhibition adds nothing to our knowledge of the subject matter of either of these works, but the Bulletin of May 16 describes them both.

130. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, May 29, 1873. 131. Mount Corcoran appears to be a spur of Mount

Whitney. See Clarence King, Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada, Philadelphia, 1963, p. 274.

132. A photograph of this work is in the Frick Art Refer- ence Library.

133. This may have been made on one of the railway transits through Ogden, but more likely it was done at another time and another place.

I34. The locale for this work was apparently studied by Bierstadt during this trip, since when he got back East he went immediately to work on it. The Tarrytown Argus of September 18, 1875 reported: "On Mr. Bierstadt's easel there is a large canvas, upon which a picture is well outlined-a passage from the history of California when the western coast was taken possession of by the Spanish. The spot chosen is south of San Francisco, a view full of picturesque beauty,"

and the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin of December 3, i875, quotes the New York Herald as saying: "Albert Bierstadt ... is painting a historical picture for the Centennial. It represents the settlement of California in 1770. The scene is on the Bay of Monterey and a Spanish man-of-war is seen in the distance, the boats being drawn up on the beach."

135. It will be noted that Point Lobos is not in Monterey, California, but at the entrance to San Francisco Bay.

136. The Bulletin of December 3, 1875 said that at that time (the time of the New York Herald report) "Among other pictures in Mr. Bierstadt's studio on which he is now engaged is . . . the 'Sierra Nevada Mountains' seen across the Bay of San Francisco as you look from the town of San Rafael."

I37. A work called Near San Rafael, California was shown at the National Academy show in 1875 but it could not have been the preceding work, since, as of approximately December 1875, [California; San Rafael, California] was still on the artist's easel.

138. See Appendix, No. I x9. Written on the back of this work is "Napa Valley, California." It looks like Napa Valley




Sacramento subjects could also have been done at more than one time during the trip: [Cali- fornia] Sacramento Valley in Spring,"89 In the Sacramento Valley, and Sacramento Valley.l'o The same is true of two subjects of Indians near Yosemite: [California] Indian Camp near Mariposa, California and [California] Indian Camp, Yosemite Valley. The latter is clearly the same locale as the former and thus not in the Yosemite Valley. (Fig. 25 shows the artist sketching Indians in Mariposa.)

Five subjects resulted from an excursion of undetermined date into the newly discovered Hetch-

Hetchy Valley-later to be flooded as a San Francisco reservoir: Hetch Hetchie Canon, California; Hetch Hetchy Fall; The Hetch-Hetchy Valley (Fig. 26--the figure at the left may represent the

artist, since it has sketching materials before it); Hitch Hitchy [sic] Valley, Cal.; and Sunrise in the Hetch Hetchy Valley.

Four other works, begun in the Sierra Nevadas, date from this trip: Sierra Nevada; ' [The Sierra Nevadas] Silver Mountain, California;`2' [The Sierra Nevadas] Valley of the Kern

River, California;"i and [The Sierra Nevadas] View on the Kern River."' There seem to be no Yosemite views directly attributable to sketches taken on this trip."' On Saturday, October i I, I873, the Bierstadts left San Francisco to return East."' By October

27 they had written to an informer of the Bulletin that they were already preparing a studio in

Waterville, New York,"' where the artist would "work many of his Pacific Coast sketches into

pictures.'1'" This was confirmed by the Utica Morning Herald and Daily Gazette of October 31, 1873, which reported that "Bierstadt, the artist, is at Waterville, where he will spend the winter."

NEW YORK CITY

APPENDIX

A Handlist of Pictures Assumed to Have Resulted from Bierstadt's Western Journeys of 1859, 1863, and 1871-1873

After settling the problem of date for Bierstadt's works, it remained to settle the subject matter and where the painting was executed. The subject matter was best identified by using a name which a work already had-whether or not that name was accurate. I have therefore retained a "recognition" title which should enable a reader to relate my documentation to the work which he may know. Where a work has been known by several titles, I have stated these.

It was also important to establish the geographical location of the artist's subjects, since, perhaps more

than any other device, this knowledge might connect the pictures with the documentation. It would also rise above the frequent error in a traditional or dealer- furnished title (often given casually or with special interest), and would afford a permanent means of relating the date and the geographical location to the subject. I have thought that in addition to such general terms as "The Yosemite Valley" and "The Cas- cades"-efficient categories for an artist such as Bier- stadt-the name of the State would be the best way to define the locale of the scene. Thus, a bracketed

to me, with possibly Mt. St. Helena in the distance, and I

assign it to this time. But a later San Francisco trip, beyond the scope of this history, may be responsible for it.

139. This is apparently the work referred to in Eugen Neuhaus, The History and Ideals of American Art, Palo Alto, 1931, pp. 8zf.: "One of his huge canvases in a private collection in California shows the State Capitol at Sacramento seen from a distance of forty miles from the foothills near Auburn, California, not merely a small blurred dot, but detailed with

great care, even showing the columns on the dome." o40. Said by Trump (see note io), p. 184, to have been

given to the Montreal Art Association in 1878. This work may be identical with either of the two preceding.

x4 . Catalogue of the art collection formed by the late Heber R. Bishop . ..

. 90o6, describes the work and says it was signed at lower right and dated 1871: "In the foreground is a sloping bank with wigwams and Indians and beyond, a placid sheet of water, surrounded by lofty cliffs. Still farther away immense crags, with snow-fields and glaciers, rise

among the clouds." 142. King, op.cit., describes this peak, which I had difficulty

locating in other sources. 143. The title is from Appleton's Encyclopedia of i888 and

may well be the same as [Sierra Nevada] View of the Kern River.

I44. Reproduced in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, LIX, No. 353, October 1879, p. 673.

145. It seems likely, therefore, that all those listed in the Appendix as apparently from the 1863 trip are actually from that trip.

146. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, October 8 and 11, I873.

147. At the back of the artist's father-in-law's home. This studio was removed two or three years ago to make room for a supermarket, as I ascertained when I visited this spot on May 5, 1964.

148. San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, October 27, 1873.




geographic term preceding the title indicates strong- to-conclusive evidence that the work originated in that locality. Where no such term occurs, I believe that no locality has been established, the quoted title notwithstanding. For untitled works I have supplied a one-line "scenario" in brackets.

Sizes are principally from the owners, height preceding width. "LL" means lower left, "LR" means lower right.

Works such as [The Rocky Mountains] Among the Rocky Mountains, known to date from after the second trip, but having subject matter appropriate to both the first and second, and such works as the Sac- ramento Valley subjects of the 1871-1873 trip, though having subject matter possible for the 1863 trip, have been placed in the group immediately preceding.

As I have noted in the text, a work may be represented by more than one title in the Handlist.

Works for which the evidence is strong-to-conclusive that they resulted from studies made during the 1859 trip:

I. [The Rocky Mountains] Base of the Rocky Mountains (or Scene Among the Rocky Moun-

tains) Titles from the I86o annual exhibition catalogue of the National Academy of Design, and from undated clipping in a private collection. Present location unknown.

2. Crossing the Plains Illustration in Harper's Weekly, August 13, 1859-

3. Crossing the Platte Illustration in Harper's Weekly, August I3, I859-

4. Emigrants Camping Title from the 1861 annual exhibition catalogue of the National Academy of Design. Present location unknown.

5. [Wyoming] Indian Encampment-Shoshone Village (or A Shoshone Village) Oil on wood panel, 24" X 19" New York, The New-York Historical Society.

6. [Wyoming] Indians Near Fort Laramie Oil on paper board, 13" x 19"/1 Boston Museum of the Fine Arts.

7. [Wyoming] On the Sweetwater Near The Devil's Gate . . . Nebraska

Oil, I2>4" x 18", dated on verso by artist 1859. New York, National Academy of Design.

8. [Nebraska] The North Fork of the River Platte (or North Fork of the Platte, Nebraska) Oil, 36" x 60" Titles from Zeitschrift fiir bildende Kunst, I1870, and from the 1863 annual exhibition catalogue of the National Academy of Design. Present location unknown.

9. A Pike's Peaker Illustration in Harper's Weekly, August I3, I859.

IO. Platte River Title from New York Evening Post, May I9, 1864 report of a Leeds & Miner auction. Present location unknown.

I 1. Platte River-Indian Encampment (or Platte River-Indians Encamped) First title from the 1861 annual exhibition catalogue of the National Academy of Design; second title from The Crayon, April 186I. Present location unknown.

12. [Nebraska] River Platte, Nebraska Oil on canvas, 58" x 36", signed LR and dated 1863. Amherst, Mass., Amherst College.

13. [Wyoming] The Rocky Mountains Oil on canvas, 73Y4" x I20Y4", signed LR and dated I863. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I4. [Wyoming] The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak Oil on canvas, 43Y2" x 35Y2", signed LR and dated 1863. Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum.

15. [Wyoming] The Rocky Mountains, Laramie Peak Oil on canvas. Formerly Buffalo, Albright-Knox Gallery. De- stroyed by fire.

I6. [Wyoming] A Sioux Camp near Laramie Peak Oil. Title from A. Pendarves Vivian, Wanderings in the Western Land, London, 1879, opp. p. 213. Present location unknown.

17. Sioux Village (or Chimney Rock, Ogalillah) Oil, signed LL, dated I86o. First title from Ralph Henry Gabriel, The Lure of the Frontier, New Haven, 1929; second title from The Ladies Repository, xxvI, January 1866. Present location unknown.

18. [Wyoming] Sioux Village Near Fort Laramie Oil on academy board, I4" x i9", signed LL and dated I859. New York, Private collection.

19. [The Rocky Mountains] Sunset, Grand Tetons (incorrect title) Oil on canvas, I9" x 29", signed LR and dated I1862. Title from Parke-Bernet, October 17, 1962 catalogue. Private collection.

20. [Wyoming] Sunset Light, Wind River Range of the Rocky Mountains




Oil on canvas, 39" x 60", signed and dated I861. New Bedford, Mass., Free Public Library.

21. Thunderstorm in the Rockies Oil on canvas, I9" x 29", signed LL and dated I859. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

22. [Wyoming] View Looking Northwest from the Wind River Mountains, The Wahsatch Mountains seen in the distance Oil on canvas 30Y4" x 48Y4", signed LL and dated i86o. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

23. Wasatch Mountains, Wind River Country, Wy- oming Oil on canvas, 26Y2" x 402", signed LR and dated I861. New Britain, Conn., Museum of American Art.

24. [Wyoming] Wind River Mountains, Nebraska Oil on panel, I I3/4"

x I8". Milwaukee Art Center.

25. [Wyoming] Wind River Mountains, Nebraska Territory Title from the 1862 annual exhibition catalogue of the National Academy of Design. Present location unknown.

26. Wind River Valley Oil on canvas, 36Y2" x 57 /4", signed and dated 1862. Virginia, Private collection.

And the following apparently from the 1859 trip:

27. [Nebraska] Chimney Rock, Nebraska Title from John Nicholson Gallery, New York City, where this work was in April 1964.

28. Nebraska [Wasatch] Mountains Oil, I3 4" x 19". Title from Nicholson Gallery, where this work was in April 1964.

Works for which the evidence is strong-to-conclusive that they resulted from studies made during the 1863 trip:

29. [The Rocky Mountains] Among the Rocky Mountains Title from the New York Evening Post, May 3I, I864, in a report of a Leeds & Miner auction. Present location unknown.

30. Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains Oil on canvas, 23?" x 35>2", signed LL and dated 1867. Present location unknown.

31. Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains (possibly the same as 30)

Title from catalogue of the 1869 Royal Acad- emy (England) exhibition. Present location unknown.

32. Antelopes Illustration in Ludlow, The Heart of the Conti- nent, Hurd and Houghton, New York, 1870.

33. Attack of Panther Illustration in Ludlow, op.cit.

34. [Boat on lake, boat on shore, distant volcanic peak with outlier, sunset] Oil, I5/4" x I8/4", signed and dated 1868. New York, Sloan Gallery, as of May 22, 1964.

35. Buffalo Calves Illustration in Ludlow, op.cit.

36. Buffalo Charge Illustration in Ludlow, op.cit.

37. Buffalo Trail: The Impending Storm Oil on canvas, 29y" x 49Y2", signed LL and dated 1869. Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art.

38. [The Yosemite Valley] Cho-looke, The Yo- semite Fall Illustration from Ludlow, op.cit. New Hampshire, Private collection.

39. The Columbia River Oil on canvas, 8" x 6Y41". New York, Kennedy Galleries as of April 15, 1964-

40. The Coming Storm Oil on cardboard, 9q2" x 13" Andover, N.H., Addison Gallery of Art.

41. Comstock's Ranche Illustration in Ludlow, op.cit.

42. Denver, Colo. Oil on paper, 14" x 19", signed LL. New York, Kennedy Galleries as of April I5, 1964.

43- [The Yosemite Valley] Domes of the Yosemite Oil on canvas, I I16" x I8o", signed LR. St. Johnsbury, Vermont, Athenaeum.

44. [Nebraska] Emigrants Crossing the Plains (or The Oregon Trail) Oil on canvas, 31" x 49", dated 1869. Youngstown, Ohio, Butler Museum.

45. [Nebraska] Emigrants Crossing the Plains (or The Oregon Trail) Oil on canvas, 60" x 96", signed LR and dated I1867. Cleveland Automobile Club.

46. [California] The Golden Gate Title from the 1865 annual exhibition catalogue of the National Academy of Design. Present location unknown.




47- [California] The Golden Gate; San Francisco Oil on canvas, 41Y" x 65Y", signed LR and dated I865. Title from Kende Gallery, New York, auction catalogue of May 4, 1945. Present location unknown.

48. [Utah] The Great Salt Lake Oil, 14" x 19". Seattle, Frye Museum.

49. The Heart of the Sierra Nevada [Snow-capped peaks, two waterfalls, ducks, deer, hunters in camp with the artist] Oil on canvas, c72" x 120". Title interpolated from The Art-Journal, Lon- don, August I868. Present location unknown.

5o. [The Yosemite Valley] In the Yosemite Valley Oil on canvas, 342" x 50", signed LR and dated 1866. Hartford, Conn., Wadsworth Atheneum.

5 1. Indians on the Move Illustration from Ludlow, op.cit.

52. Jean Baptiste Moncrewvie Illustration from Ludlow, op.cit.

53. Lake Tahoe Oil on canvas, 22" x 30". Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

54. Lake Tahoe (possibly same as 53) Title from Zeitschrift fiir bildende Kunst, 1870. Present location unknown.

55. [The Rocky Mountains] Landscape Title from 1864 catalogue of the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design. Present location unknown.

56. [The Yosemite Valley] Looking Down Yo Semite Valley, Cal. Title from New York Times, June 13, I865- Present location unknown.

57. [The Yosemite Valley] Merced River, Yosem- ite Valley Oil on canvas, 36" x 50", signed LR and dated I866. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

58. Morning in the Rocky Mountains I4?" x 25". Title from Zeitschrift fiir bildende Kunst, 1870. Present location unknown.

59. [The Cascades] Mount Adams Oil on canvas, 49" x 83", signed LR and dated I875. Princeton University Museum, Princeton, N.J.

60. [The Cascades] Mount Hood Oil on canvas, 36?" x 60o4", signed LR and dated I869. Portland, Oregon, Museum.

61. Mount Hood, on the Columbia River Oil, 1866? Title from The Ladies Repository, xxvI, Jan- uary 1866. Present location unknown.

62. [California] Mount Shasta Oil on canvas, 20" x 35"/4 Oakland Art Museum.

63. [The Cascades] Mount St. Helen (sic) Oil, 9" x 12", signed LR. New York, Kennedy Galleries as of April I5, 1964.

64. Multnomah Falls, Oregon Oil on canvas, 44" x 30", signed. New York, Kennedy Galleries in 1947.

65. [California] Old Mission, San Francisco Title from the Thomas Thompson 187o New York sale catalogue. Present location unknown.

66. The Overland Mail Title from Zeitschrift fiir bildende Kunst, 1870. Present location unknown.

67. The Overland Mail Coach Illustration from Ludlow, op.cit.

68. Portrait of Comstock Illustration from Ludlow, op.cit.

69. Prairie Dogs Illustration from Ludlow, op.cit.

70. A Rocky Mountain Scene Title from an engraving in A. D. Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi, Hartford, 1867, opp. p. 302. Present location unknown.

7 . Rocky Mountains Oil on canvas, 41" x 55", signed LR and dated 1866. International Business Machines Corporation.

72. [Utah] Salt Lake City [Wahsatch] Moun- tains-[Uintah] Range Oil, I4" x 20". New York, Bartfield Gallery as of April I5, I964.

73. [The Yosemite Valley] Sentinel Rock, Yosemite Oil, 26%" x I9" Title from a photograph in the Frick Art Ref- erence Library. Present location unknown.

74. The Sierra Nevada in California Title from the review of the Berlin I868 Royal Academy exhibition in The Art-Journal, Lon- don, August 1868. Present location unknown.




75. [The Sierra Nevadas] The Sierra Nevada Mountains, California Title from the 187o annual exhibition catalogue of the National Academy of Design. Present location unknown.

76. [The Yosemite Valley] Starr King Mountain, California Oil on canvas, 38" x 56", signed LR and dated I866. The Cleveland Museum.

77. [Colorado; Mount Rosalie? Mount Evans? Mount Warren? ] Storm in the Rocky Moun- tains, Mount Rosalie (or Storm in the Colorado Valley or Storm in the Rocky Mountains) Oil on canvas, 84" x 144". Present location unknown.

78. Sunset in California I2" X I8". Title from Zeitschrift fiir bildende Kunst, 187o0; San Francisco Chronicle, August I2, 1869, L. Prang & Co. chromolithograph. Connecticut, Private collection.

79. Sunset on the Coast Oil on panel, 22" x 30", signed LR and dated 1866. Private collection.

8o. [Utah; Weber River Canyon] Interpolated title from a letter of the Duke of Manchester, November 5, 1873, to Mrs. Bier- stadt. Present location unknown.

81. [The Yosemite Valley] Valley of the Yosemite Oil on prepared millboard, I I34" x 19y4", signed LR and dated 1864. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

82. Wolves Attacking a Wounded Buffalo Illustration from Ludlow, op.cit.

83. [The Yosemite Valley] Yosemite [Fall]---Cala (or View in the Yosemite, California) Paper mounted on canvas, I83/4" x

253/4". First title an interpretation of a verso inscription by the artist; second from Santa Barbara Mu- seum of Art, Albert Bierstadt 1830-1902, I964, illus. 35. New Jersey, Private collection.

84. [The Yosemite Valley; Domes of the Yosem- ite] "Yosemite," California Oil on canvas, 21?" x 33 * l Boston, Private collection.

85. Yosemite-Sunset in the Rockies Oil on canvas, 26" x 36", signed and dated I 866. Present location unknown.

86. [The Yosemite Valley] The Yosemite Valley Oil on canvas, 36" x 50", signed LR and dated I867. Hartford, Conn., Wadsworth Atheneum.

87. [The Yosemite Valley, El Capitan] Illustration from Ludlow, op.cit.

88. [The Yosemite Valley; Looking Down Yosem- ite Valley] Oil on canvas, 36" x 54", signed LL and dated I868. Title appears to agree with San Francisco Chron- icle, November 25, 1869 "scenario" of the work. Oakland Art Museum.

89. [The Yosemite Valley] Yosemite Valley with Mirror Lake in the Foreground Oil on canvas, 22" x 304'", signed and dated 1864. Santa Barbara Museum.

And the following apparently from the 1863 trip:

90. Bison Oil, I3%" x 18Iy". Virginia, Private collection.

91. Bison with Coyotes Title from a reproduction in Harold McCracken, Portrait of the Old West, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1952. Present location unknown.

92. Buffalo Oil on paper, 137/" x 19". Newark Museum.

93. A Bull Buffalo Oil. Title from A. Pendarves Vivian, Wanderings in the Western Land, London, 1879, p. 292. Present location unknown.

94. Surprising the Herd Oil, 14" x 19". New York, Eberstadt Gallery in 1958.

95. Wind River, Wyoming, 1870 Oil on canvas, 54" x 84", signed LR and dated 1870. Cody, Wyoming, Whitney Gallery.

96. Yosemite Valley, Cala. Oil on paper mounted on masonite, Io02" x

140-", signed LL. Title from verso inscription in, apparently, artist's hand. New York, Kennedy Galleries as of August I8, 1964.

Works for which the evidence is strong-to-conclusive that they resulted from studies made during the 1871- 1873 trip:

97. [The Sierra Nevadas] At the Summit Oil, 14"/4 X 2I~X . Portland, Oregon, Museum.




98. [The Sierra Nevadas; Kings River and Mount Brewer] Autumn in the Sierras Oil on canvas, 72" x 120". Title from San Francisco Daily Evening Bul- letin, May 29, 1873- Present location unknown.

9,9. [California]Bay of Monterey, California Oil on paper, 133/4" x 8 34". Private collection.

Ioo. [The Sierra Nevadas] Cala. Owens Valley Oil, c14" x 19" Title from inscription on verso. New York, Chapelier Gallery as of April 1964.

lo . [The Sierra Nevadas] Cala-Owens Valley, S. Sierra Oil on paper, 10" x 13%/4", dated 1871. Title from inscription on verso. New York, Kennedy Galleries as of April I5, 1964.

1o2. [California; San Joaquin River, California] Oil on canvas, c48" x 72". Title interpolated from San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin of April I5, I873. Present location unknown.

IO3. [California; San Rafael, California] Title interpolated from San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, December 3, 1875. Present location unknown.

104. [The Sierra Nevadas] Donner Lake at the Summit Oil on canvas, 72" x 120". New York, The New-York Historical Society.

105. [California] Expedition under Vizcaino landing at Monterey 16oi Oil on canvas, 72" x 126". Washington, D.C., National Capitol.

I o6. Farallone Islands Oil on canvas, 42 x 64". Title from American Art Sales, ix, No.I, p. 3. Present location unknown.

107. [The Sierra Nevadas] Head of King's River, Tulare County Title from San Francisco Daily Evening Bul- letin, April 17, 1873. Present location unknown.

I o8. Hetch Hetchie Caion, California Oil on canvas, 51>2" x 42". South Hadley, Mass., Mount Holyoke College.

Io09. Hetch Hetchy Fall Oil, I4" x 22". New York, Kennedy Galleries as of April 15, 1964.

I I o. The Hetchy-Hetchy Valley Oil on canvas, 372" x 58". Hartford, Conn., Wadsworth Atheneum.

I II. Hitch Hitchy [sic] Valley, Cal. Oil on canvas, I6" x 21 ". New York, Kennedy Galleries as of April 15, 1964-

11 2. [California] Indian Camp Near Mariposa, California Oil on paper, 14" x 21". Private collection.

113. [California] Indian Camp, Yosemite Valley, Cal. Oil on paper, 16" x 213/4". Private collection.

114. [The Sierra Nevadas] King's River Canon, Cal. Oil on academy board, cIo"/2 x 14"- Title from inscription on verso. New York State, Private collection.

I 15. [The Sierra Nevadas] King's River Canyon Title from San Francisco Daily Evening Bul- letin, December 3, 1875. Present location unknown.

116. [The Sierra Nevadas] Mount Corcoran Oil on canvas, 6I" x 96y4", signed LR. Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art.

117. [The Sierra Nevadas] Mount Whitney Oil on canvas, 79" x 117". New York State, Private collection.

I I8. Mt. Whitney Oil on canvas, 54" x 84" New York, Private collection, as of 1939.

SI19. Napa Valley, California Oil on paper, c7" x I O/4". New York, Argosy Gallery as of April 8, 1964.

120. [California] Near San Rafael, California Title from 1875 catalogue of the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design. Present location unknown.

121. [The Sierra Nevadas] Near the Summitt [sic] Cala. Oil on paper, 14Y/2" x 20". New York, Kennedy Galleries.

122. [California] Point Lobos Monterey [sic], Call- fornia Oil on canvas, c323/4" x 452". New York, Victor Spark Gallery in April I951.

I23. [California] Sacramento Valley in Spring Oil on canvas, 55" x 85". San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor.

124. [California] San Joaquin River Oil on canvas, 48" x 60o". Title from San Francisco Daily Evening Bul- letin, May 16, 1873. Present location unknown.




125. [California] San Rafael, California (possibly same as 103 or 120) Oil on canvas, 317/8" x 48", signed LR. New York, Parke-Bernet Gallery, April 4, I944.

126. Seal Rocks, Farallones Oil on paper mounted on paper board, I332" x

I9", signed LL. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

127. Sierra Nevada Oil on canvas, 36" x 54", signed LR and dated 1871. Title from Catalogue of the art collection

formed by the late Heber R. Bishop New York ... 1906. Present location unknown.

128. Sierra Nevada-Morning Oil on canvas, 54" x 84", signed LR. New York, Kennedy Galleries as of 1947-

129. Sunrise in the Hetch Hetchy Valley, California Oil on canvas, 29/4" x 433/4", signed LR.

Springfield, Mass., George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum.

130. Utah, 1872. Oil on paper, 9>2" x 13>", signed LL. New York, Kennedy Galleries as of April 15, 1964.

I31. [The Sierra Nevadas] View on the Kern River (possibly same as 272) Title from Harper's New Monthly Magazine, October 1879. Present location unknown.

132. Wasatch Mountains near Ogden, Utah

Oil, 23" x 28/2". Title from advertisement of New York department store, November 26, 1947, unidenti- fied. Present location unknown.

I33. [The Yosemite Valley] Yosemite in the Winter

(possibly same as 142) Oil on canvas, 32" x 48", signed and dated 1872. Berkeley, California, University of California.

Works for which the evidence is strong-to-conclusive that they resulted from studies made during either the

z863 or the z87z-z872 trips:

I34. The Ambush Oil on canvas, 20/2" x 30". Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

I135. Antelope and Family 12" X 19". Title from Catalogue of choice and valuable paintings from the collection of Mr. Edward Bierstadt . . . for sale at auction April 27, 1905 ... Present location unknown.

I36. Blue Clouds in the Rockies

Oil, 13 2" x 163/4". New York, Chapellier Gallery in 1964.

137. The Buffalo Trail Oil on canvas, 32" x 48", signed LR. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

138. The Buffalo Trail (Possibly same as preceding) Oil on canvas, 32" x 48". New York, Nicholson Gallery.

139. Calif. Big Trees

Oil, 13Y2%" x 19", signed LR. New York, Eberstadt Gallery, as of April 15, 1964-

140. California Redwoods

Oil, I4" x 19". New York, Eberstadt Gallery, 1958.

141. California Sunset

Oil, 12"x I882 ". Newark Museum until 1936.

142. [The Yosemite Valley] Cathedral Rocks in the Winter (or A Winter Scene) (possibly same as 133 or 143) Titles from San Francisco Daily Evening Bul- letin, June 17, 1872, and San Francisco Chron- icle, June I9, I872. Present location unknown.

143. [The Yosemite Valley] The Cathedral Rocks in the Yosemite Valley (possibly same as 142) Oil. Title from engraving opposite p. 376 of A. Pendarves Vivian, Wanderings in the Western

Land, London, 1879- Present location unknown.

144. Coastal Scene, California Oil on paper, mounted on board, I59/4" x 2I". Title from Parke-Bernet catalogue, April 23, 1964. Present location unknown.

I45. Colorado. 1873 Oil, I4" x 20", signed LR. New York, Bartfield Gallery as of April I5, I964.

I46. [Distant Mountains from foreground mountains, intermediate valley] Oil on canvas, 28"/2 x 39"/4"* New York, Knoedler Gallery as of April I5, I964.

I147. [The Yosemite Valley] El Capitan, Yosemite Valley, California Oil on canvas, 323/4" x 48", signed LL, and dated I875 on verso. Toledo, Ohio, Museum.




148. Elk at Sunrise Oil, 36" x 52", signed. New York, Eberstadt Gallery, Catalogue No. 146, 1958.

149- [California] Forest Monarchs Oil on canvas, 32y2" x 482/", signed LR. Stockton, Calif., Pioneer Museum and Haggin Galleries.

150. [California] Giant Redwood Trees of Cali- fornia Oil on canvas, 52y" x 43", signed LL. Pittsfield, Mass., The Berkshire Museum.

151. [The Yosemite Valley] Glacier Point Trail Oil on canvas, 54" x 84s/s", signed LL. New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery.

152. [California] Golden Gate Oil, 17" x 22". New York, Chapellier Gallery as of March 4, 1964.

153. [California] The Great Trees of California Oil on canvas, 6o" x

lo8". Title from Art Property collected by the late Mrs. A. G. Hunt and important works in oil belonging to the estate of the late Edward Bier- stadt... [1/22 and 23/o8]. Present location unknown.

154. [The Yosemite Valley] A Halt in the Yosemite Title from D. Appleton & Co., Selections in Modern Art, 1885-1886. Present location unknown.

155. In the Sacramento Valley Oil, 32/2" x 48Y4", signed. New York, Nicholson Gallery, in 1964.

156. An Indian Beauty Oil on canvas, I8" x 22". Title from Rains Galleries Catalogue, April I6, 1936. New York, The New-York Historical Society.

I57. [Indian Camp] Indian Camp, Oklahoma (incorrect title) Oil on paper mounted on canvas, I3Y4" x 17/4", signed LR. Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

158. [Five Indians] Indian Chiefs Oil on paper, 133/4" x 19". Title from Rains Galleries Catalogue, May 8,

I935. New York, The New-York Historical Society.

I59. [Four Indians] Indians Oil on gray academy board, 133/4" x 183/4". New York, The New-York Historical Society.

I60. Indians [sic] and Buffalo (or Buffalo Hunter or Indian Buffalo Hunt) Oil, I4/2" x I9~'4".

Titles from Knoedler, February 25, I949; Art News, December 13, 1930; Arts, September 1956. Present location unknown.

161. The King of the Mountains Oil. Title from Richard Shafer Trump, Life and Works of Albert Bierstadt, unpublished doctoral thesis, Ohio State University, 1963, p. 173* Possibly a painting of the giant sequoia "General Grant" (see Thurman Wilkins, Clarence King, New York, 1958, p. 65). Present location unknown.

162. Lake Esther, Sierra Nevada Mountains Title from Henry T. Williams, The Pacific Tourist, 1876, p. 212. Present location unknown.

163. Lakeside Landscape Oil, 9"x 13". Title from American Art Sales, v, No. 5, P- 3. Present location unknown.

164. [Landscape, deep woods, waterfall, deer by stream] Oil on canvas, 44" x 36". California, Private collection.

165. Landscape on Platte River Oil on panel, 18"x 24/2", signed LL. Columbus, Ohio, Gallery of Fine Arts.

166. [Wyoming] The Last of the Buffalo Oil on canvas, 69" x 17", signed LR. Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art.

167. [Wyoming] The Last of the Buffalo Oil on canvas, 6o" x 96". Cody, Wyoming, Whitney Museum.

I68. [The Yosemite Valley] Liberty Cap and Nevada Falls Oil, 24" x 30". Title from Eberstadt catalogue No. 146, 1958. Present location unknown.

169. [The Yosemite Valley] Looking up the Yo- semite Valley Oil on canvas, 39" x 62", signed LR. Stockton, Calif., Pioneer Museum and Haggin Galleries.

170. [The Yosemite Valley] Looking up the Yo- semite Valley Oil. Title from Mrs. H. J. Taylor, Yosemite In- dians and Other Sketches, San Francisco, I936. Repeated letters from the Yosemite Museum have reported that this work was not in that place, although Taylor, op.cit., reported that it was there in I936 and another source has stated that as of 1963 it was being restored at the Smithsonian Institution after having been defaced by a summer tourist.




17'. [The Yosemite Valley] Moonlight Title from New York Evening Post, June 21, 1864. Present location unknown.

172. Moonlight Oil on paper, Io~/4" x 15Y4". New York, Argosy Gallery as of April 8, 1964.

173. [The Yosemite Valley] Moonlight on the Merced (possibly the same as I7I, since the Post's "scenario" appears to describe this work) Oil on canvas, 27" x 34", signed and dated 1864. Yosemite Valley, Calif., The Yosemite Mu- seum.

174. [Moonlight, ships, small boats on shore, Marin County? ] Oil, 24" x 36". New York, Chapellier Gallery, 1964.

175. Moonlight. Yosemite Oil on canvas, 25" x 36", signed LR. New York, Kennedy Gallery as of May I5, 1964.

176. Mt. Diablo from the San Joaquin River, Cali- fornia Oil, i3/2" x 19•~". New York, Private collection.

177. Mountain Lake

Oil, 14" x 18". Title from Parke-Bernet catalogues April I I, 1946 and January II, 1950o. Present location unknown.

178. Mountain Lake Oil on canvas, 32" x 52". Houston Museum of Art.

179. Mountain Landscape Oil,

30"? x 22".

Title from Parke-Bernet catalogue, February 15, 1949. Present location unknown.

i 8o. Mountain Landscape Oil on cardboard mounted on masonite, 131"2 x 18/2". Title from Parke-Bernet catalogue, October 5, 1963. Present location unknown.

181. Mountainous Landscape by Moonlight Oil on canvas, 30" x 50", signed LR and dated 1871. Washington, D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art.

182. [Mountains, glacier, two boats on water] Oil on paper mounted on board, 13" x 9/2". Private collection.

183. [The Yosemite Valley] North Dome Yosemite Valley Oil on panel, 19" x 26".

New York, Kennedy Galleries, November 1953. 184. [California] Redwood Trees

Oil on paper mounted on cardboard. Title from Los Angeles County Museum Bul- letin, Summer, 1954. Present location unknown.

185. Sacramento Valley Title from Richard Shafer Trump, Life and Works of Albert Bierstadt, unpublished doctoral thesis, Ohio State University, 1963, p. 184. Present location unknown.

186. San Francisco Bay Formerly New York, Nicholson Gallery. Pres- ent location unknown.

187. Scouts Oil on paper, 14" x 18/2". Title from The Kennedy Quarterly, III, No. 2, October 1962. Present location unknown.

i88. [California] Seal Rock Oil on canvas, 30" x 45", signed LR. New Britain, Conn., Museum of American Art.

189. [Snow-capped mountains, lake, pines at left] Oil on paper, 3" x 5". New York State, Private collection

19o. Snow Scene with Buffalo Oil on composition board, I8" x 24". Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

I91. [The Yosemite Valley] Sphinx Rock Oil on academy board, 5" x 5Y4". Oberlin, Ohio, Oberlin College Museum.

192. Sunrise Oil, 21" x

30"o, signed LR.

Title from Catalogue of the American Art Association, February 8, 1935 sale. Present location unknown.

193. [Sunrise? in the Sierra Nevadas?] Oil on paper, 3" x 33/8", signed LL. New York State, Private collection.

194. Sunrise, Yosemite Valley Oil on canvas, 3612" x 52". Title from The Kennedy Quarterly, I, No. 4, October i96o. Present location unknown.

195. [Sunset, distant mountains, pines at left] Oil on paper mounted on board, 4" x 8". New York State, Private collection.

196. Sunset Glow Oil on canvas, 30" x 442". Title from Vose Gallery, 1960. Present location unknown.

197. [The Yosemite Valley] Sunset in Yosemite Valley Oil on canvas, 38" x 55", signed LL, possibly dated 1888 (I868?).




Stockton, Calif., Pioneer Museum and Haggin Galleries.

198. Sunset Near the Platte River (or Salt Lick at Sunset Glow) Oil on canvas, 27 " x 39", signed LL. Title from 1908 sale (see I53) and 1941 survey by Vose. New Bedford, Mass., Free Public Library.

199. [Wyoming] Sunset on the Headwaters of the Green River-Wyoming Title from San Francisco Daily Evening Bul- letin, January 31, 1876. Present location unknown.

200. Sunset on the Plains Oil on canvas, 19" x 26". Title from Legacy of the Land, Catalogue of University of Kansas Museum of Art, Novem- ber 12, 196x-January 15, 1962, exhibition. Lawrence, Kansas, The University of Kansas Museum of Art.

201. Sunset on the Prairie Title from undated clipping in private collection. Present location unknown.

202. [The Sierra Nevadas] Sunset-Sierra Nevada Mountains Title from 1908 sale (see I53). Present location unknown.

203. [Sunset, water, pines at right] Oil, 5 Y" x 8", signed LL. New York State, Private collection.

204. [Sunset with cottonwoods] Oil, 6Y2" x 9y2", signed LL. New York State, Private collection.

205. [Sunset, woodland, crane in water, elms in right distance] Oil on paper, 8" x I0o4", signed LL. New York State, Private collection.

206. Surveyors' Wagon in the Rockies Oil on paper, 7 4" x 1278", signed LR. St. Louis, Mo., City Art Museum.

207. Tall Timber Oil, 20" x 30". Title from Kennedy Galleries, 1950. Present location unknown.

208. Twin Falls, Idaho (incorrect title) Oil, 22" x 35", signed and dated I874. Title by tradition via T. Gilbert Brouilette. Present location unknown.

209. Two Fawns and a Doe Oil. Syracuse, N.Y., Syracuse University Museum.

210o. Wagon Train (sic-there are only two wagons

in the work and these are considerably separated) Signed LR. New York, Knoedler Gallery, February 18, 1949- Present location unknown.

21 . [Waterfall, water, distant snow-capped mountains, rocks, dead tree] Oil, 5 2" x 62f", signed LR. New York State, Private collection.

212. [Kansas] Western Kansas Oil on canvas, 28" x 39Y2", signed LL. Title from Illustrated Catalogue / the master- pieces of the / International Exhibition / r876 / The Art Gallery ... Present location unknown.

213. Western Landscape Oil, 14" x 20". New York, Kennedy Galleries, 1947.

214. [The Yosemite Valley] Western Landscape with Antelope Oil on millboard, 14" x 20".

Title from the Pasadena Museum, American Painting of the Nineteenth Century, p. 13. California, Private collection.

215. The Wild West Oil on paper mounted on canvas, I

I" x 15", signed. New York, Newhouse Gallery, 1944.

216. [The Yosemite Valley] Yosemite Falls Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 19" x 14", signed LR. New Britain, Conn., Museum of American Art.

217. [The Yosemite Valley] The Yosemite Falls Oil on canvas, 26f2" x 36". Worcester, Mass., Art Museum.

218. [The Yosemite Valley] Yosemite Sphinx Oil, 13Y2" xx 9". Formerly New York, Nicholson Gallery.

219. Yosemite Valley Oil on paper mounted on canvas, 19" x 14". Detroit Institute of Arts.

220. Yosemite Valley Oil, 21" x 28". Title from American Art Sales, xI, No. 3, p. 16. Present location unknown.

221. [The Yosemite Valley] The Yosemite Valley Oil on canvas, 3712" x 5912", signed. Title from 1908 sale (see I53). Present location unknown.

222. [The Yosemite Valley] Yosemite Valley Oil on canvas, 37" x 52", signed LL. Stockton, Calif., Pioneer Museum and Haggin Galleries.




223. Yosemite Valley Oil on canvas, 27Y/4" x 39Y2", signed LL. Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts.

224. [Yosemite Valley? with pines] Oil, 14" x 9". New York, Chapellier Gallery, 1964.

Works possibly resulting from one of the first three western trips:

225. Afterglow--"glory of the heavens" Donner Lake Oil on canvas, 26" x 36", signed LR. Title from verso inscription by artist.

226. Alaska (Columbia River?) Oil, 13 Y2" x 1974", signed LR. Title from Eberstadt Gallery, 1964. Present location unknown.

227. The Black Horse Oil on paper mounted on cardboard, 13Y2"

x

194". Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

228. The California Coast (or Water Dashing Rocks) Oil, 13 " x 18y2", signed LR. Second Title by Eberstadt. New York, Eberstadt Gallery, April 15, 1964.

229. Campfire Oil on canvas, 17" x

24•2". In Hirschl and Adler Gallery as of June 5, I964.

230. Canyon and River Oil on academy board, 12" x I8", signed LR. New York, Kennedy Galleries, as of August 17, 1964-

231. Coastal Scene Oil, 14" x 19", signed LL. Title from Parke-Bernet Gallery, New York, catalogue, February 20, 1963.

232. Colorado Sunrise in the Rockies Oil, 14" x

19". New York, Chapellier Gallery, March 1964.

233. Columbia River (apparently incorrect title) Oil, 85/8" x

I578". Portland, Oregon, Museum.

234. The Dead Moose Oil. Title from A. Pendarves Vivian, Wanderings in the Western Land, London, I1879, opp. p. 39. Present location unknown.

235. [The Cascades? Shasta?] Encampment in the Rockies Oil on paper, 1958" x 25", signed LL. Brooklyn Museum.

236. Fiery Sunset over Lake Tahoe, California Oil, I3 /4" x 19". New York, Nicholson Gallery, I964.

237. Lake Mary, Cal. Oil on canvas, 14" x

19". New York, Kennedy Galleries as of April 15, I964.

238. Lake Tahoe Oil, I8" x 27". New York, Chapellier Gallery as of April 15, 1964.

239. Lake Tahoe [spearing fish at night] Oil on canvas, 32" x 48", signed LR. Title from American Art Association catalogue, December 4 and 5, 1918. Present location unknown.

240. [Landscape] Oil on paper, 7" x 123/", signed LL. New York, Argosy Gallery, April 8, 1964.

241. Landscape-Moonlight Oil, 28" x 44". Title from American Art Sales, VI, No. I, p. 38, November 1925. Present location unknown.

242. Montana (incorrect title) Oil on paper, 12y" x 19". New York, Argosy Gallery, 1963.

243. Mount Whitney, California Oil on canvas, 14"x 19". Title from Kennedy Galleries, New York. Present location unknown.

244. The Mountain Brook Title from the 1863 annual exhibition catalogue of the National Academy of Design. Present location unknown.

245. A Mountain Range, with Black-Tailed Deer Oil. Title from Vivian, op.cit., opp. p. 305. Present location unknown.

246. [Mountain scene; Rockies? Sierras? Cas- cades?] Oil, 14" x 19"

New York, Chapellier Gallery, 1964.

247. The Mountain Sheep Oil. Title from A. Pendarves Vivian, op.cit., opp. p. 261. Present location unknown.

248. [Mountain lake, rocks, pines. Lake Tahoe?] Reproduction in Albert Bierstadt clipping file, New York Public Library. Present location unknown.

249. [Mountains and clouds] I3/" x I8", signed. New York, Chapellier Gallery, March 5, I964.

250. [Mountains, lake, pond, pines, Indians at left] Reproduction in Albert Bierstadt clipping file, New York Public Library. Present location unknown.




251. Mounted Trapper Oil on paper, signed LL. Title from Parke-Bernet catalogue, January 4, I960.

252. Pacific Coast, California Oil on paper, 13/4" x 20/4". Title from Kennedy Galleries, New York. Present location unknown.

253. Prong-horned Antelope Oil. Title from A. Pendarves Vivian, op.cit., p. 169. Present location unknown.

254. Rider and Packhorse Oil on canvas, 20" x 28". Title from Kennedy Galleries, New York. Present location unknown.

255. The Rockies (possibly incorrect title) Oil on academy board, I4" x I6Y2", signed LR. Title from Kennedy Galleries, New York. Present location unknown.

256. Rocky Mountain Goat Oil, 13Y4" x ISy", signed LR. Virginia, Private collection.

257. Rocky Mountain Landscape Title from American Art Sales, v, No. i,

November 1924, p. 23. Present location unknown.

258. Rocky Mountain scene (possibly incorrect title) Oil, signed. Kaw, Oklahoma, Clubb collection.

259. A Rocky Mountain Valley Oil on canvas, 36" x 58Y2", signed LR. Title from American Art Galleries catalogue, April 4, 1918. Present location unknown.

260. Rocky Mountains, Colorado (possibly incorrect title) Oil on paper mounted on composition board, I33/4" x I8>2". Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

261. Scenery in the Grand Tetons (possibly incorrect title) Oil on canvas, 30" x 44". Title from The Kennedy Quarterly, Decem- ber I959. Present location unknown.

262. Seal Rocks, San Francisco (possibly incorrect title) Oil, 15/4" x 28", signed LR. Portland, Oregon, Museum.

263. Sierra Nevada Mtns. (possibly incorrect title) Oil, 12" x 20o/4". Title from Old Print Shop, New York. Private collection.

264. Silver Mountain, California (possibly incorrect title) Oil, 13Y2" x 19y2", dated 1873? Formerly New York, Nicholson Gallery.

265. Spearing Fish at Night, Lake Tahoe, California (possibly incorrect title) Oil, o10" x 13>2"- Title from Victor Spark, New York, April 16,

'947. Present location unknown.

266. Stag and Does Oil on canvas, 24" x 49", signed LR. Title from Kennedy Galleries, New York. Present location unknown.

267. Storm in the Rockies (possibly incorrect title) Oil on paper, 13>2" x

19". Title from Albert Bierstadt clipping file in New York Public Library; apparently same locale as 250. Present location unknown.

268. A Storm in the Rocky Mountains Oil, 30Y8" x 39Y8", signed. Title from Mondschein, New York. Present location unknown.

269. Sun-lit Skies Oil Virginia, Private collection.

270. Sunset on the Lake Oil, 5/4" x 9>4"* The Century Association, New York.

271. [Three deer; one running, two lying] Oil, signed LR. New York, Goodspeed's, October 1938.

272. [The Sierra Nevadas] Valley of the Kern River California (possibly same as 131 ) Title from Appleton's Encyclopedia, i888. Present location unknown.

273. [California] View of Oakland Oil, 6Y/4" x

IOO/4t. Oakland Art Museum.

274. Wapiti Feeding Oil. Title from A. Pendarves Vivian, o0.cit., p. 206. Present location unknown.

275. Wapiti on the Prairie Oil. Title from A. Pendarves Vivian, op.cit., p. 207. Present location unknown.

276. A Wapiti Roaring Oil. Title from A. Pendarves Vivian, of.cit., p. I 80. Present location unknown.

277. Wind River Mountains, Rocky Mountains Oil, 36/4" x 58>2". Title from Albert Bierstadt file in New York




Public Library, December 14, 1933, sale. Present location unknown.

278. [A Winter Snow Scene] (apparently a Bier- stadt work) Oil, 20>" x 47". Formerly in Philadelphia Museum of Art, missing since 1932. Possibly the work referred to by the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, Sep- tember 30, I870.

279. The Wolf River, Kansas (possibly incorrect title)

Oil on canvas, 38" x 48", signed LR. Title by Kennedy Galleries. The Detroit Institute of Arts.

280. [Napa Valley? ] Wyoming (Apparently incorrect title) Oil on canvas, I9>" x 26>2", signed. Santa Fe, New Mexico, Museum.

281. Yosemite Sketch (possibly incorrect title) Oil, 13f " x

19". Formerly New York, Nicholson Gallery.



Documents

The First Three Western Journeys of Albert Bierstadt