Yosemite Valley with Native American Encampment

Hiram Reynolds Bloomer (American, 1845-1911)

Composition depicting a Native American encampment in Yosemite Valley.

An American artist known for his California landscapes, Hiram Reynolds Bloomer was born in New York on December 19, 1845. He came to California with his family in 1852 and settled in San Francisco.

He received an early appreciation of nature and introduction to painting, as his father was an artist and botanist. Having decided upon an art career, he became a pupil of Virgil Williams, Thomas Hill, J.B. Wanderforde and Stephen William Shaw from 1868-73. In 1874, Bloomer held a successful auction of his own paintings and then traveled to Paris. The years 1874-79 were spent in Paris, where he took over Whistler’s old studio while studying with Charles Auguste Emile Durand and Leon Germaine Pelouse. He went on sketching trips to the neighborhood of the Forest of Fontainebleau, staying at the village of Barbizon. He was one of the party, along with Robert Louis Stevenson, that discovered the nearby hamlet of Grez. His Old Bridge at Grez was purchased by the French government. 

The years 1879-90 were spent in England.

Bloomer returned to the United States and studied at the National Academy of Design in New York for two years. In 1892 he returned to San Francisco and resumed his residence and studio at 506 Battery Street. Early in his career he concentrated on portraiture, but after returning from Europe, he turned his attention to the local landscape. His works done after this time show the influence of the Barbizon painters, as he turned his attention to the beauty in the local landscapes, which early on, showed the influence of Thomas Hill, depicting magnificent mountain subjects like Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta and Yosemite. 

Signed H R. Bloomer, (lower left)

Private Collection, Fairfield County, CT

Centennial Exposition (Philadelphia), 1876

Paris Salon and Expo Universelle, 1878

Royal Academy (London), 1879-90; Bohemian Club, 1897-1911

Mark Hopkins Institute, 1903, 1906

San Francisco Art Ass’n, 1904

Del Monte Art Gallery (Monterey), 1907-09.