| Date: | not dated, probably 1880-1886 |
| Medium: | oil on canvas |
| Size: | 40 x 60 in (102 x 152 cm) |
| Inscription: | l/r: "F. Schàfer. SF", in the artist's characteristic block-letter hand, underlined, grave accent probably intended to be an umlaut |
| Verso: | l/c "Ev. on Mount Tamalpais from Ross Valley, California.". On the stretcher u/l "38". |
| Provenance: | Estate sale, San Jose, California, 1992; with Bingham Galleries San Jose, California; with Vintage Bank Antiques, Petaluma, California; to private collection, northern California, 1996. |
| Exhibited: | Mount Tamalpais exhibition, The Museum of Sonoma County, April 1993 to August 1993. |
| Reproductions: | Early California and Western Art Research/Schafer slide #118 (color, 1993) |
| Site: | View from the north of Mount Tamalpais, in Marin County, California, at sunset. |
| Description: | Mount Tamalpais stands against a bright blue sky with a few wispy clouds above and a fog bank gathering to the right. The sun, low on the right, illuminates the upper half of the mountain and a few trees on the left that stand at the top of a nearer, dark, heavily-forested ridge. Haze or smoke fills the valley beyond the ridge. The mountain is viewed up a valley with a series of low ridges on either side. The ridge to the right is almost bare of vegetation; a line of dark conifers stands on the valley floor just before the first ridges; lower, lighter green, deciduous trees appear amid the conifers. The foreground is a wide, green flood plain with a dark stream in the center flowing directly toward the viewer. A sandbar on the right side of the stream divides it into two channels. (From the painting, October 1996.) |
| Note: | The profile of the mountain is almost identical to that of [Evening on Mount Tamalpais 2], in contrast with Mount Tamalpais from Ross Valley, California [1], which is of a view up a similar-appearing valley, but to a mirror-image mountain profile, presumably from the south. The initials "S.F." following the signature suggest that the painting was executed during the period 1880-1886, when Schafer had a studio in San Francisco. |
| In index(es): | Title list, Mount Tamalpais |
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