[Part of the Trunk of the "Grizzly Giant" with Clark - Mariposa Grove - 33 feet diameter]

Getty Museum

[Part of the Trunk of the "Grizzly Giant" with Clark - Mariposa Grove - 33 feet diameter]

Creator

Carleton Watkins

American Photographer · 1829–1916

All works by this person →
AmbrotypistPublisherArtist

At twenty, Carleton Watkins headed out to California to make his fortune. After working as a daguerreotype operator in San Jose, he established his own practice and soon made his first visit to the Yosemite Valley. There he made thirty mammoth plate and one hundred stereograph views that were among the first photographs of Yosemite seen in the East. Partly on the strength of Watkins's photographs,

More on Getty ULAN
Date
negative 1861; print about 1866
Medium
Albumen silver print
Culture
American
Department
Photographs
Institution
Getty Museum

Carleton Watkins's guide into Yosemite Valley, Galen Clark, stands at the thirty-three foot wide base of a sequoia tree known as "the grizzly giant," legitimizing the larger-than-life tales of the western wilderness. The sequoia's fallen branches at Clark's feet are so large they are the size of ordinary trees. After Abraham Lincoln ceded the area to California in 1864, Clark was officially appointed the Guardian of Yosemite. As its caretaker, he received an annual salary of five hundred dollars.

The authoritative record is held by Getty Museum. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.

Get printable QR codes

Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.

Open this page
See at Getty Museum

Related across collections

Semantically similar works from Getty Museum and other institutions.