First View of the Yosemite Valley from the Mariposa Trail

Photography and Media

1865/66

Carleton E. Watkins
American, 1829-1916

In the 1860s, Carleton Watkins was the first to document the untouched wilderness that would become Yosemite National Park. Transporting his fragile equipment on mule or carriage through difficult terrain, Watkins used a “mammoth-plate” camera whose glass negatives measured up to 18 by 22 inches and yielded remarkably detailed prints of the same size. He favored spectacular compositions with dramatic spatial depth. In this photograph, Watkins depicted Yosemite Valley’s immense span through the receding planes of mountains and the giant Sequoia trees that frame them. Watkins printed more than 1,100 mammoth-plate photographs over the course of his career. Unfortunately, the majority of his glass negatives and prints were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Photography and Media

Artist: Carleton Watkins
Title: First View of the Yosemite Valley from the Mariposa Trail
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1865–1866
Medium: Albumen print
Inscriptions: Unmarked recto; verso unchecked
Dimensions: Image/paper: 39.9 × 52.4 cm (15 3/4 × 20 11/16 in.); Mount: 47.4 × 61 cm (18 11/16 × 24 1/16 in.)
Credit Line: Laura T. Magnuson and Maurice D. Galleher Endowments
Reference Number: 1986.22
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/105101/manifest.json

Chicago, Illinois, Art Institute of Chicago, “A History of Photography from Chicago Collection,” April 24–June 6, 1982.
Tokyo, Japan, Seibu Museum, “Art of Photography,” March 3–April 1, 1990.
Art Institute of Chicago, “A Measure of Nature: Landscape Photographs from the Permanent Collection. May 30–September 7, 1998. (Sylvia Wolf)
Art Institute of Chicago, Gallery 10 Permanent Collection Rotation, May–October, 2012.

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First View of the Yosemite Valley from the Mariposa Trail

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.