Looking up Among the Sugar Pines - Calaveras Grove
ca. 1878
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
Image: 12.5 x 12.5 cm (4 15/16 x 4 15/16 in.), circular Album page: 24 x 25.1 cm (9 7/16 x 9 7/8 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Gift of The Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.556 (7)
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the late 19th century, Carleton E Watkins, a pioneering American photographer, captured the awe-inspiring scale of California's ancient forests with *Looking up Among the Sugar Pines Calaveras Grove*ca. 1878). This intimate albumen silver print, from a glass negative, a circular vista gazing skyward at towering sugar pines (Pinus lambertiana) in the Calaveras Grove. The low-angle perspective immerses viewers in the forest's grandeur, a signature of Watkins' ability to convey nature's majesty through photography. Watkins' work played a vital role in the conservation movement, as his stunnin...
About the Artist
Carleton E. Watkins · 1829–1916
Carleton E. Watkins (1829–1916), one of America's pioneering landscape photographers, was born on November 11, 1829, in Oneonta, New York, the eldest of eight children to carpenter John Watkins and innkeeper Julia. Drawn by the Gold Rush, he arrived in San Francisco in 1851 at age 22 alongside childhood friend Collis Huntington, who later became a railroad tycoon. Initially working as a carpenter ...