The Three Brothers, 4,480 feet, Yosemite Valley, after 1860
Albumen print, 8 1/16 x 12 1/16 in. (20.4 x 30.6 cm)
A. Conger Goodyear, B.A. 1899, Fund
1975.72.1
Written reports of the beauty and immensity of the Californian landscape seemed almost unbelievable to mid-nineteenth-century Easterners, but Carleton Watkins's views of Yosemite Valley provided visual verification of the grand scale of the West. His commitment to conveying scale truthfully would ultimately result in his use of the mammoth-plate camera—a camera of his own invention—that produced large (15 1/2 x 20 1/2-inch) prints and convincingly portrayed the overwhelming expanses and forms in and around Yosemite. Yale's smaller albumen print, made after 1860 but before Watkins's regular use of the larger-format camera, reveals his dedication to size and scale in a different way: Watkins's image provides confirmation of the 4,480-foot height of the rock formation in its title.
 |
 |
 |