Yosemite Valley

For the first time in its history, the public will be able to purchase reproductions of this iconic painting that are truly faithful to the artist's intent. Until now, publishers have had to rely on material from unknown sources with no reliable color target to work with. This leads to poor quality prints that fail to create an accurate representation of the original masterpiece. The only way to truly match an original is with a high quality digital file of the original painting produced by a professional under the proper conditions. This painting is in the collection of The Yale University Art Gallery who provided us with such a file through their Open Access Program. Our location just thirty minutes from Yale has allowed us to achieve an unrivaled quality previously not seen for this work. We made several trips to Yale to compare the original painting to our proofs allowing us to make color and tonal corrections to match it precisely. We are very proud of this print, and we think Albert Bierstadt would be as well. *** Under a broad golden sky, a mountain guide at lower left points to the distance, instructing his companions where to look. The sun’s golden orb, thickly painted, sits like an ingot in the sky, a shining emblem of the land’s riches. Images of landscape and ideas of nation were deeply intertwined, helping to shape and articulate American identity in the mid-nineteenth century. These monumental panoramic views of the West, both literal and in paintings, promised Americans a golden future. Albert Bierstadt was the first American painter to capture fully the symbolic power of the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevada, and Yosemite Valley. Ironically, his “untouched” landscapes were post-settlement spectacles, made after the completion of the transcontinental railway through the western frontier, which brought thousands of tourists to the West, such as those shown here.