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Yosemite Valley from Mariposa Trail
About the Artwork
In 1859, Charles L. Weed made the first photographs of the wild and breathtakingly beautiful Yosemite region in California. These pioneering photographs spoke of the area's splendors to future visitors and artists. Probably five years later, he returned to Yosemite to begin creating his remarkable mammoth plate views (roughly 17x22 inches). This celebrated vista of the distant, mountainous, forest scene is the best known of Weed's modest production of large-scale photographs. The serenity and order of the composition is punctuated by an isolated, spindly tree perched at a cliff's edge, asymmetrically dividing the composition while uniting the blank sky with the mountainous landscape below. The figure leaning against the tree in the foreground gives scale to the scene and suggests human isolation in the vastness of nature.
Exhibition history
Charles Isaacs and Carol Nigro Collection of American Photography. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (April 26-September 10, 2003). Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 24-September 16, 2007); Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, PA (October 3, 2009-January 3, 2010).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Charles Leander Weed (American, 1824–1903)
- Date
- c. 1865
- Medium
- mammoth albumen print from wet collodion negative
- Dimensions
- Image: 39.7 x 51.7 cm (15 5/8 x 20 3/8 in.); Mounted: 55.6 x 71 cm (21 7/8 x 27 15/16 in.); Matted: 71.1 x 81.3 cm (28 x 32 in.)
- Type
- Photograph
- Classification
- Photograph
- Department
- Photography
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Accession no.
- 2002.43
More by Charles Leander Weed in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00012989
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