| Date: | undated |
| Medium: | oil on canvas, lined |
| Size: | 30 x 48 in (76 x 122 cm) |
| Inscription: | l/r "Frederick Scháfer", in the artist's block-letter hand, underlined, with the "h" and "f" descending below the underline. |
| Verso: | said to be "The Yosemity Valley - California" before lining |
| Provenance: | With Jim Finlinson Antiques, Berkeley, Jan. 1978, to Garzoli Gallery. With Wortsman Stewart Galleries, Inc., San Francisco, 1979. In private collection, Northern California, 1992. |
| Reproductions: | Early California and Western Art Research/Schafer slide #49 (color, 1979, 1992); Garzoli Gallery photo (color, 1978) |
| Site: | View East into Yosemite Valley, California, from atop the Topinemete bluffs along the old Mariposa trail, probably at Inspiration point. |
| Description: | El Capitan on the left is struck by a very bright vertical stripe of sunlight behind a pair of tall conifers. Cathedral Rocks appear on the right, with Bridalveil Fall below, half-obscured by the brightly sunlit slope of the nearby hillside. Half Dome is crisply clear in the distance against a blue sky with a few fluffy clouds, and Sentinel rock is in full view, silhouetted against a dark mountainside beyond. The Merced River crisscrosses the distant valley below. An Indian woman in an orange and red dress and carrying a papoose stands with a staff, talking with an Indian seated on a rock at the side of the trail while a child stands in her shadow. The foreground is shadowed, but bright and filled with green brush. Another pair of tall conifers stands on the right, intertwined almost as a single tree while a snag stands behind them and slightly to the right. Farther back, the trees are again clustered in pairs or threes; they gradually become more and more dense and the trail finally disappears into a forest. The painting is very bright, using unsaturated colors throughout except in the green foliage of a few conifers in the middle distance. (From a color photograph.) |
| Note: | This is one of several Schafer paintings of Yosemite Valley in which the tall foreground conifers are clustered in pairs or threes. Other examples are the small watercolor [Three hikers entering Yosemite Valley], oils The Yosemite Valley from Artist's Point, California [4], [The Yosemite Valley 13] (1881), [Yosemite Valley from Artist's Point, California 5], and the mural The Yosemite Valley (mural) (1895). |
| Identification: | Despite title differences, the three photographs are all of the same painting. When the painting was rephotographed in 1992 the title had the added words (from Inspiration Point) |
| Other title(s): | The Yosemite Valley, California (Wortsman Stewart Galleries, Inc. and Early California and Western Art Research); The Yosemite Valley from Inspiration Point (Early California and Western Art Research) |
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