Yosemite Valley. Boston Mass. Chas. H. Crosby & Co. Lith., n.d. [1873]. Chromolithograph, 36x51 cm (14 x 20 inches). "Chromolithography, then a relatively recent development in color printmaking, made reproductions of paintings affordable to a wide audience. By the late 1860s, tourists who could not afford originals of Bierstadt and Hill could instead buy 'chromos' based on their work. Bierstadt's 9x15-foot painting, The Domes of the Yosemite (1867), was reproduced as a suitably large chromo, approximately 22x33 inches in size. Prang's chromo of Thomas Hill's Yosemite Valley (1868), probably the most popular of its kind, was copied by more amateur painters than any other Yosemite image. In the early 1870s, Yosemite chromos were copyrighted by a number of artists who evidently hoped their prints would be as lucrative as those by Hill and Bierstadt. Among them were Benjamin Champney, John Ross Key, Robert Wilkie, and an otherwise unknown painter, Charles Clark, whose Yosemite chromo is very similar to Hill's. The Key and Wilkie chromos were small in size, but formed part of Prang's series of California subjects, an indication of the ever-growing demand for inexpensive souvenir images ... Clark's Yosemite Valley was copyrighted by Charles H. Crosby in Massachusetts in 1872 and 1873, and by D. S. Norris in 1873 (copyright no. 4425, Library of Congress). Chromos by Key and Wilkie can be seen at the Boston Public Library Print Collection" (Kate Nearpass Ogden, "Sublime Vistas and Scenic Backdrops: Nineteenth-century Painters and Photographers at Yosemite," Yosemite and Sequoia: a Century of California National Parks, edited by Richard J., Orsi, Alfred Runte, and Marlene Smith-Baranzini [Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. San Francisco: California Historical Society, (1993)], p. 65; 136). Faint semicircular discoloration at top center of image, else a lovely example of this rare print. DLC has a copy.. There are copies at Yale, the Library of Congress and the Bancroft Library. (#166561).
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