Protecting the Land

Collector's Focus: Painting the National Parks

By John O’Hern

In 1863, Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) camped in the Valley of the Yosemite, painting sketches that he would express as often massive paintings in his New York studio.

While in Yosemite he wrote to his friend John Hay, “We are now here in the garden of Eden as I call it. The most magnificent place I was ever in.” Hay (1838-1905) was, at the time, a secretary to president Abraham Lincoln. He would later serve as secretary of state to presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.

Phyllis Shafer, Cook’s Meadow, Yosemite National Park, 2013, oil on canvas, 14 x 34”. Courtesy the artist.

In 1864, Lincoln deeded Yosemite to the State of California, “upon the express conditions that the premises shall be held for public use, resort and recreation.” In 1865, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903), designer of New York’s Central Park with Calvert Vaux (1824-1895), was a member of the Yosemite board of commissioners. He warned that “the slight harm which the few hundred visitors of this year might do, if no care were taken to prevent it, would not be slight, if it should be repeated by millions.” In 1890, Yosemite was declared a national park, and in 2021, Yosemite National Park had 3.29 million visitors.

Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), Valley of the Yosemite, 1864, oil on paperboard, 117/8 x 19¼". Museum of Fine Arts Boston, MA. Gift of Martha C. Karolik for the M. and M. Karolik Collection of American Paintings, 1815-1865. Public Domain.

Bierstadt was instrumental in the popularization of the West. The introduction of the railroad and the hope for peace after the end of the Civil War contributed to the appeal. His small oil on paperboard, Valley of the Yosemite (1864), is typical of his luminist interpretations of the Western landscape. His romanticizing of the landscape, however, supported the idea of Manifest Destiny, that the movement west and its settlement by European immigrants was divinely ordained. In the painting, the valley is pristine with no hint of the presence of man, deer peacefully drinking from the lake and gazing up as we might at the golden light of the setting sun. Half Dome looms on the right above a rotting stump on the lake shore, a memento mori that life is short.

Claggett/Rey Gallery, Mystic Veil, oil, 48 x 48", by Curt Walters.

The foreground of Phyllis Shafer’s Cook’s Meadow, Yosemite National Park, 2013, is alive with wildflowers beyond which Half Dome dominates the distance. Hudson River School painters like Bierstadt believed the American landscape is a reflection of God. Shafer writes, “I am especially interested in the pantheistic quality of high altitude vistas juxtaposed to the intimate microcosm of the flora and fauna. These explorations of spatial extremes, for me, refer to the relationship between ‘world’ and ‘self.’ By probing beneath surface appearances, I try to reveal a nature that relates to bodily and psychological states of being.”

Tatyana Fogarty, Fall Colors at Yosemite Falls, oil on linen, 12 x 9”; Legacy Gallery, Brahma Temple from the North Rim, oil, 40 x 42”, by Kenny McKenna.

She seeks “to distill and crystallize that essence and the vital rhythms that animate” the landscape. She paints the forms of flowers, fields and trees flowing with living energy, a technique she applies to the solid mountains as well, recalling their once fluid state. The mountains have a level of verisimilitude that they are recognizable as specific landmarks. Yet, they are painted in the same stylized manner as the flora in the foreground.

Her magical realism recalls the work of Charles Burchfield (1893-1967) who painted in Shafer’s native Buffalo, New York. He wrote, “An artist must paint not what he sees in nature, but what is there. To do so he must invent symbols, which, if properly used, make his work seem even more real than what is in front of him.”

Legacy Gallery, Cascade Canyon Trail, Tetons, oil, 15 x 24", by Robert Peters.

Growing up in Russia and Ukraine, Tatyana Fogarty studied piano and later taught English and French in Ukraine before coming to the United States. Captivated by the light and color of the West Coast, she began painting in oils in plein air.

She says, “I see my art as visual music. I try to bring it to life with harmonious colors, which emanate joy and peace. I infuse each of my brush strokes with its own kind of melody. My hope is that the viewers will hear the sounds and rhythms of that music as they look at my work, and it will generate the same emotions and connections that I had when painting that piece. I am inspired by the way light shapes the landscape, and I strive to capture it on canvas.”

In Fall Colors at Yosemite Falls, her impressionistic brushstrokes convey the vitality of the scene from the sunlit foliage in the foreground to the shadowed mountain and back into the sunlight on the falls. The even intensity of the brushstrokes creates the impression that rocks, trees and waterfall are one—perhaps the rustling trees softly echoing the roar of the falling water.

Top: Claggett/Rey Gallery, Summer Shadows, oil, 24 x 36”, by Lanny Grant; The Erin Hanson Gallery, Saguaro Sky, oil on canvas, 60 x 60”, by Erin Hanson. Bottom: The Erin Hanson Gallery, Mittens Dusk, oil on canvas, 39 x 35”, by Erin Hanson; The Erin Hanson Gallery, Canyon de Chelly Dawn, oil on canvas, 28 x 36”, by Erin Hanson.

Throughout the pages of this special section, collectors can explore even more depictions of the beauty and majesty of our country’s famed national parks.

Legacy Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, represents the work of dozens of the top Western artists working today, including Arizonan Robert Peters and landscape painter Kenny McKenna. “Growing up in Arizona, Robert Peters is no stranger to National Parks. Producing large Western landscape paintings has brought him to many of our nation’s most famous scenes. Peters draws strictly from his own observations, out in the great outdoors. If you have been to the place he is painting, you will certainly notice it immediately,” says Haley Delaunais, marketing manager for Legacy Gallery. “Kenny McKenna strives to capture the feel of the landscape by location painting, sketching and photographing, then finishes the piece in his studio. Whether painting the vastness of the Grand Canyon, the Arizona desert, Monument Valley, the Rocky Mountains or a sunset on the Great Plains, his objective is to create a piece that comes together by knowing what to paint in and what to leave to a viewer’s imagination.”

Legacy Gallery, Ancient Pueblo, Canyon de Chelly, oil, 28 x 50", by Robert Peters

Claggett/Rey Gallery celebrates the visual journey of painting the national parks over the centuries. “Since Thomas Moran first captured the magical vistas in the 1870s of what would eventually become the touchstone of our national treasures and protected lands, artists have challenged themselves to paint these environments of sublime beauty. The resilience of artists that hike to places most of us have not seen or endure inclement weather trying to echo in brush strokes the environment surrounding them is astonishing,” notes Maggie DeDecker, co-owner of Claggett/Rey Gallery. She cites artists like Curt Walters, Josh Elliott, Walt Gonske, Lanny Grant and more as “the most persuasive evidence for why we honor and protect these places of aesthetic splendor.” Work by these artists and many more can be viewed at Claggett/Rey Gallery, located in Edwards, Colorado.

Claggett/Rey Gallery, Apparition-Glacier National Park, oil, 30 x 36", by Josh Elliott.

Artist Erin Hanson, the founder of “Open Impressionism,” has captured the imagination of art enthusiasts around the world with her passion for natural beauty and the ways in which she transforms vistas familiar and rare into stunning interpretations of bold color, playful rhythms and raw emotional impact. “As an iconic, driving force in the rebirth of contemporary impressionism, Hanson is quickly recognized as a prolific, modern master,” says Amy Jensen, director of the Erin Hanson Gallery. Hanson’s work can be viewed at any of her three eponymous galleries in Scottsdale, Arizona; Carmel-by-the-Sea, California; or Oregon Wine Country. —