Carleton E. Watkins 1829-1916

mammoth-plate albumen print, mounted, the photographer’s letterpress label, with the title, series number 857, series title, and his ‘427 Montgomery Street, San Francisco’ studio address, affixed to the mount, the collector’s stamp on the reverse, matted, framed, the Monterey Museum of Art exhibition label on the reverse, 1878-81

The Old Book Store, San Francisco, 1967

Focus Gallery, San Francisco, Early Views of Yosemite and the California Missions: Photographs by Carleton E. Watkins from the Collection of Gordon Bennett, November – December 1973

Monterey Museum of Art, Carleton E. Watkins: Yosemite Photographs, Courtesy of Gordon L. Bennett, June – September 1993

The view looks out toward the Nevada and Vernal Falls, and to the left, the distinctive Mount Broderick, or ‘Cap of Liberty.’  The perpendicular drop of the Vernal Fall is clearly visible, and beyond it, the higher Nevada Fall.  The latter waterfall drops 594 feet from the Merced River onto several shelves of rock, creating dramatic whitewater sprays.  Its distinguishing “S”-curve at the top has been caught by many photographers, including Watkins, in other, closer views.  According to Browning, the Nevada Fall was named by Lafayette Bunnell in 1851, and was so-called because it was the nearest to the Sierra Nevada (op. cit., p. 103).  The Vernal Fall and Nevada Fall are stations on one of the most popular hikes in Yosemite today, the ‘Mist Trail.’

The view presented here is similar to another made by Watkins in the mid-1860s. The ‘New Series’ view is in this instance more broadly horizontal, providing a larger expanse of the Valley and the mountains beyond.  Le Conte relates that he was told by John Muir that the cliffs at the top of the Nevada Fall, with their ‘polishing and scorings,’ provided ‘unmistakable evidences’ of a glacier (op. cit., p. 50).  

For closer views of the Nevada Fall by Watkins, see Palmquist, op. cit., pl. 12, and two photographs in Lot 76 of the present catalogue.  For the circa 1865-66 view, see Fraenkel, op. cit., pl. 33.