Indians at Campfire, Yosemite Valley, California

Thomas Hill was one of the most productive painters of Yosemite Valley, having first visited in 1862 and returning throughout his career to document the valley's dramatic scenery. This 1885 canvas of Indians at a campfire in Yosemite is unusual in his oeuvre for combining the valley's landscape with a scene of Native life — the Ahwahneechee people had lived in Yosemite for centuries before being removed by the Mariposa Battalion in 1851. Hill's inclusion of Native figures gives the painting a complexity beyond simple landscape celebration, touching on the dispossession that underlay the creation of national parks.

Hill places the campfire at the center of the composition, using its warm light to illuminate the surrounding figures and create dramatic contrasts with the blue-grey dusk landscape beyond. The valley walls and waterfalls are treated with his characteristic combination of dramatic scale and atmospheric softness. The foreground scene is rendered with narrative specificity.