Yosemite Artists & Writers - part one

Yosemite has long inspired people to be creative, from the purity of line in Chiura Obata's watercolors to the design of buildings like the Ahwahnee Hotel that blend in with the landscape.  Art is a natural expression of those who are surrounded by the wonders of nature, who seek not to create a work of art that is simply different but to create something that helps them understand what they are experiencing and to share this with others. The following is a list of the art forms involved, with a few of the notable people working in each.

The early painters and artists of Yosemite focused on the grand scale of the park, finding it hard to believe that such a wilderness place existed, even though they were looking right at it.  They found it harder to convince others.  Thomas Ayres made the first Yosemite sketches in 1855.  Albert Bierstadt, beginning in 1863, used light in his paintings for dramatic effect, and moved a few mountains around to help direct the mood.  William Keith, 1860s, painted more literally after a trip with John Muir, recording the scene like a photographer.  Thomas Hill, 1860s, used a style that was a blend of Bierstadt and Keith. 

Painters coming after them focused on smaller, more intimate scenes, partially because all the big panoramas had already been painted.  In the 1920s William Zorach introduced an avant garde style, and in the 1930s Obata began a series of striking watercolor pictures showing Japanese influences.  He came after seeing the series of woodblock prints that Hiroshi Yoshida made of Yosemite.  Ellen Frank Chan, 1980s and Hong Leung, 1990s (lithograph), also included Asian dynamics in their art.  Jane Gyer (1960s-2004) worked with watercolors and scratchboard.  An exhibit in Yosemite in 1985 displayed many different styles of painting.

The early writers tended to focus on the physical wonders of Yosemite and the people who lived there.  Lafayette Bunnell, in 1851, recorded early descriptions of Yosemite and the Ahwahnechees.  James Hutchings published a national magazine extolling the valley.   John Muir wrote articles and books detailing his adventures, his studies of glacial action, and his concern for protecting the wilderness.  Galen Clark compiled three books on Yosemite history in the 1890s.  In the 1930s Francois Matthes wrote the definitive study on Yosemite's geology, The Incomparable Valley.

The poetry written in the late 1800s, as with the painting of the period, tended to be more about reading grand images of humanity and divinity into the landscape than anything specific about Yosemite.  In the 1950s Gary Snyder joined a trail crew in the park.  One night, while sitting under a juniper tree near Paiute Creek, letting the presence of the Sierra sink into him, he found his voice as a poet.