Copy of Carleton Watkins' "Galen Clark Before the Grizzly Giant,"
c. 1863
Medium
Print on paper from woodcut engraving
Dimensions
Image: 23 × 17.3 cm (9 1/16 × 6 13/16 in.); Paper: 33.9 × 25.4 cm (13 3/8 × 10 in.)
Classification
woodcut
Department
Photography and Media
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
65801
Art Historical Context
Carleton Watkins, one of the most influential photographers of the American West, captured this striking view of Galen Clark standing before the massive Grizzly Giant sequoia around 1863. Clark, the first guardian of Yosemite, appears dwarfed by the ancient tree, underscoring the and majesty of the landscape that helped inspire the creation of Yosemite National Park. Watkins’s original photograph belonged to a groundbreaking series that brought the wonders of the Sierra Nevada to Eastern audiences for the first time. This woodcut engraving is a later reproduction of Watkins’s photograph, prin...
About the Artist
Carleton Watkins · 1829–1916
Carleton Watkins (1829–1916) was an American photographer whose majestic landscape photographs of the American West, particularly of Yosemite Valley, rank among the most important images in the history of photography. Born in Oneonta, New York, he moved to California during the Gold Rush era and learned photography in San Francisco in the late 1850s. In 1861, Watkins made his first trip to Yosemi...