Birmingham Museum of Art
Birmingham, AL
205-254-2566
Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California ;1865. Oil on canvas
64 1/4 x 96 1/2 inches; Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham Alabama; Gift of the Birmingham Public Library.
It was Bierstadt's 1863 overland journey that inspired Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, of 1865. A 1991 gift to the Museum from the Birmingham Public Library, Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, is a masterpiece in the collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art. This painting was Bierstadt's main contribution to the National Academy of Design's 1865 Annual Exhibition in New York. According to several contemporary accounts, it was hung in "the position of honor." Bierstadt toured the painting in 1866, and it traveled to at least four different locations. It was exhibited in Philadelphia in May, in Milwaukee at Hampsted's Music Room in July, in Cincinnati in October, and then again in Philadelphia in December, when it was purchased by Uranus H. Crosby of Chicago for $20,000.
Uranus H. Crosby earned his fortune as a distiller and built the most elaborate opera house west of the Atlantic coast in 1865. Crosby faced financial ruin when he went severely over budget with the construction of his Chicago Opera House. In an effort to improve his financial situation, Crosby was convinced by his friends to hold a lottery that would award the Chicago Opera House itself as the first prize. An advertisement in the Chicago Daily Tribune on June 22, 1866, stated that Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, valued at $20,000, would be offered as the second prize in Crosby's Opera House lottery. Many tickets were sold; however, the unsold tickets remained in Crosby's possession.
The lottery was held on January 21, 1867, and generated sufficient funds for Crosby to regain the Opera House from the owner of the winning ticket. Fortuitously for Crosby, he retained the ticket for Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California. At some point after the lottery, Uranus either sold or gave his building and art collection to his cousin, Albert Crosby. Albert continued to employ James F. Aitken, a former New York art dealer, as the curator of the Crosby collection.
Crosby continued to exhibit his collection of paintings at the Opera House until the great Chicago Fire of October 8, 1871. The Opera House was destroyed in the fire, but fifty-one paintings in Crosby's collection, including Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, were dramatically rescued. When the fire spread toward the city center, James F. Aitken rented a wagon and sped to retrieve the paintings from the burning Opera House. Aitken was forced to leave behind more than one hundred paintings in the Crosby collection, and he barely escaped from the flames himself.
On October 18, 1871, the Boston Transcript announced that the saved paintings from Crosby's Opera House would be exhibited in Boston, including this masterpiece, which had never before been seen there. The painting may have continued to travel to other cities as well to raise money for fire relief for the city of Chicago. The painting returned to Chicago in late 1871 or 1872. Albert Crosby loaned his complete painting collection to the newly opened Chicago Fine Art Institute in May, 1873, and it was publicly exhibited there until the Institute closed in 1875. Crosby twice loaned Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, to the Chicago Art Institute, first in 1885 and again in 1887. The whereabouts of Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California for the next forty years are still a mystery.
In October 1929, the painting came up at auction in Chicago and was sold for $300. Later in that same year, the owner and her husband were transferred from Chicago to Birmingham by his employer, Tennessee Coal and Iron. The new owner generously gave the painting to the Birmingham Public Library with the stipulation that it be insured for $15,000. For forty-five years Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California, graced the Literature Department of the library. Beloved by library patrons and the Birmingham public, the painting was unknown to scholars of Albert Bierstadt and nineteenth-century American landscape painting.
In 1974, Edward Weeks, then curator of painting and sculpture at the Birmingham Museum of Art, discovered the painting and suggested it be cleaned by a conservator. After treatment, which revealed the luminosity of the canvas as well as Bierstadt's signature and the date, Library Director Richardina Ramsay indefinitely loaned the painting to the Birmingham Museum of Art where it could be given the proper humidity, security, and appreciation in the context of other great American paintings. The Birmingham Public Library under Director George Stewart most generously made the painting a permanent gift to the Museum in the fall of 1991. The massive walnut frame surrounding the painting is believed to be the original and weighs in excess of five hundred pounds.
See the museum's page on its 19th century American collection.
The Birmingham Museum of Art is located at 2000 Eighth Avenue North, Birmingham, Alabama, 35203. Admission is free (except some special exhibitions). Hours are: Tuesday-Saturday, 10-5; Sunday, 12-5. Closed Mondays, New Year's Day, Christmas Day, Thanksgiving Day. Extended hours until 9 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month with special programming on these evenings.
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