Yosemite Valley, California. Boston: Louis Prang, 1869. 25 1/2 x 15 1/2 inches. Chromolithograph. Mounted on canvas and stretcher as issued. In original period frame. An original print reproducing a painting of Yosemite Valley by Thomas Hill. Hill was born in Birmingham England and moved with his family to Taunton, Massachusetts in 1844. Hill studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts under Peter F. Rothermel. Hill began his painting career as a New England painter along with a group of other artists/friends that included Asher B. Durand, George Inness, Benjamin Champney, Albert Bierstadt and others. Hill moved to California in 1861 for health reasons and painted in Yosemite for the first time in 1862. From 1868 to 1870 Hill resided in Boston where he displayed his monumental painting of the Yosemite Valley. Louis Prang, a color printer in Boston was so impressed with this painting that he ordered a small copy which Hill made and from which this chromolithograph was made. The print was well received by the public and Hill's reputation and popularity was assured. The original painting was exhibited in Philadelphia at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 and was judged one of the best on display. It was sold for a then princely sum of $10,000. Hill returned to Yosemite to live and paint until his death in 1908. Louis Prang was America's most prominent publisher of chromolithographs in the mid-nineteenth century. Born in Germany, Prang learned color printing from his father, a calico printer. He immigrated to the United States in 1850 for political reasons. After a short-lived partnership as a chromolithographic printmaker with Julius Mayer (Prang & Mayer), Prang set up his own firm of L. Prang & Co. in 1860. His initial success came from his many small color prints and his album and greeting cards which were popular with the public and often collected in keepsake albums. In the 1866 Prang issued the first of his color lithographic copies of landscape paintings and launched his magazine, Prang’s Chromo: A Journal of Popular Art. Prang’s prints based on oils and watercolors were highly praised by the press and many influential persons, and these art prints became hugely successful. Eventually Prang issued about 800 chromolithographs of this sort, which he advertised as: “PRANG’S AMERICAN CHROMOS. ‘THE DEMOCRACY OF ART’ ... Our Chromo Prints are absolute FACSIMILES of the originals, in color, drawing, and spirit.” Prang used the paintings of many of America’s leading artists to produce his prints, including those by A. F. Tait, Eastman Johnson, Thomas Moran, F. S. Church, and Albert Bierstadt. This print after the Thomas Hill painting is a superior example of the quality that chromolithography could achieve. Some light creases at upper edge, several tiny flaked areas needing touchup, but still very attractive with vibrant color. (#157253).
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