Yosemite Valley, Glacier Point Trail

Painted in 1873 and held at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, this view of the Glacier Point Trail above Yosemite Valley by Bierstadt depicts one of the most dramatic viewpoints in American scenery. The Glacier Point Trail rises above the valley floor to vantage points from which the entire grandeur of Yosemite—Half Dome, the waterfalls, the valley depths—is visible simultaneously. By 1873, Bierstadt had made multiple Yosemite visits and was among the painters most responsible for creating the popular conception of Yosemite as a national sacred space.

The trail composition allows Bierstadt to organize the image around the vertiginous drop from the trail's edge to the valley far below, with the dramatic spatial recession characteristic of his Yosemite paintings. His luminous atmospheric handling gives the distant valley and waterfalls an almost ethereal quality, the sunlight dissolving the far distances into a golden haze.