Prologue

Viewing Environment through a Particular Lens

The paintings featured below are representations of a romantic ideal of nature—a wilderness whose beauty inspires and restores the spirit, and which stands in contrast to the explosive and often damaging growth of modern cities. They illustrate the notion that nature is more than just a source of food and materials, and that nonhuman organisms and their habitats have intrinsic value. But these paintings also represent the perspectives of European settlers, who alternately placed Native Americans and non-Europeans “in” nature or erased them completely from view.

By the mid-to-late-nineteenth century, many artists traveled to California to capture renderings of its unique environment. For painters like Albert Bierstadt, Norton Bush, Frances Palmer, and Thomas Hill, the awe-inspiring wilderness of California could not have been more different than the cities they called home. Expressions such as "pure," "unspoiled," and "majestic" were common. So too was the fear that California was another western landscape that would soon fall to the march of industrialization. These romanticized portraits played a large role in helping to promote ideas of preservation among lawmakers in both Sacramento and Washington D.C.

California's wilderness, however, was far from empty. In fact, it had been home to Indigenous tribes for at least 15,000 years. American and European artists largely addressed the presence of Native peoples in three ways. Some artists erased them completely from the landscape. Others depicted them as part of nature, referencing an inherent relationship between tribe and environment that later shaped settlers' notions that became known as the "Ecological Indian." Lastly, some artists viewed their art as anthropological, documenting in painstaking detail Native peoples and cultures that, like the California wilderness itself, might soon vanish. Today, however, both survive. People have always been interconnected with the environment, as revealed on this website through the oral histories, which allow historical actors and witnesses to share their own perspectives in their own words.

Voices

Meet The Artists

Albert Bierstadt (1830 - 1902)

Born in the Rhine Providence of Prussia (today Western German), Bierstadt was a German American painter best known for his landscapes of the American West. A student of the Hudson River School, an informal art movement known for its landscapes and romantic style, his paintings of western landscapes helped create support for the preservation movement and the establishment of Yellowstone National Park.

Norton Bush (1834 - 1894)

Born in Rochester, New York, Bush was a landscape painter best known for his landscapes of California and South America. Also a student of the Hudson River School, he moved to California after extensive travels in South America, where he opened a studio in San Francisco. His artwork earned him recognition throughout the state, and was purchased by California notables such as James Flood, Edwin Crocker, and Leland Stanford.

Thomas Hill (1829 - 1908)

Born in Birmingham, England, Hill was a painter best known for his landscapes of the Yosemite Valley. He emigrated to the United States at the age of 15, and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before moving to San Francisco in 1856. Through the remainder of his career, Hill made yearly sketching trips to the Yosemite Valley and maintained a studio at Yosemite's Wawona Hotel.

Frances "Fanny" Palmer (1812 - 1876)

Born in Leicester, England, Palmer was an artist who had a successful career as a lithographer. After operating her own lithography business with her husband in England, the Palmers moved to New York where Frances began work as a lithographer with the company Currier and Ives. She specialized in landscape and genre prints and became known as one of the most prolific lithographers of her time.

Raymond Dabb Yelland (1848 - 1900)

Born in London and raised in New Jersey, Yelland was a landscape artist and art instructor. After studying at the National Academy of Design in New York, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he taught at Mills Seminary (later known as Mills College), the California School of Design, and the University of California, Berkeley. Much of his work focused on the seashores and mountains of Northern California.