Yosemite Valley by Andrew Melrose

Andrew W. Melrose (1836-1901)
“Yosemite Valley” California (from Mariposa Trail)
Washington, DC: 1887
Chromolithograph
35 ½” x 47” framed

The son of the artist George Melrose, Andrew Melrose was born in Selkirk, Scotland in 1836. He later moved to the United States, keeping a studio in New Jersey until his death in 1901. A painter of landscapes, Melrose traveled the United States and Ireland in search of majestic natural beauty. His best-known works are of the landscapes of Yosemite.

This iconic view of Yosemite Valley, from the vantage point of Sentinel Dome with El Capitan, Cathedral Rock, the Merced River and the Bridal Veil Falls in the distance, is a chromolithograph created from a painting by Melrose. After the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869, many more tourists where able to visit the Yosemite Valley. Chromolithographs, often sold for a few cents a piece, were an affordable souvenir.

Works by Melrose are included in the collections of the New York and New Jersey Historical Societies, the Newark Museum and Oberlin College.

This iconic view of Yosemite, along with other California landscapes by noted artists such as Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill and William Keith, is currently on display at Arader Galleries San Francisco location. For more information visit www.aradersf.com or call us at 415-788-5115.

19th-Century Art Inspired Travel Exhibition at Cantor Arts Center, Stanford

19th-Century Art Inspired Travel

Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran:
Tourism and the American Landscape
January 30 – May 4, 2008
Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University

As railroad and steamship companies opened the nation’s previously inaccessible regions to visitors, landscape artists created images that inspired tourists to travel to distant locales like the White Mountains, the Adirondacks, Yosemite, and Yellowstone. Church, Homer, and Moran traveled extensively in the United States in search of picturesque and sublime landscapes to paint. Their works, along with guidebooks and travel-related photographs and novels, helped to familiarize American audiences with the nation’s scenic wonders.

The exhibition, which is organized by Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution in New York, includes nearly 130 objects, made up of more than 70 painted oil sketches, studio paintings, and drawings, as well as books, stereographs, railroad brochures, and decorative objects. The exhibition is accompanied by a 200-page illustrated book with essays by the curators of the exhibition and two outside scholars.

For more information on this exhibition, visit http://museum.stanford.edu/news_room/pressrelease_Tourism.html.

The above image is Thomas Moran's "Grand Canyon" chromolithograph from the Arader Galleries collection. If you have any questions about this print, or any other 19th century American West material, please contact Arader Galleries at 415-788-5115