Redwoods, Bull Creek Flat, Northern California

c. 1960, printed 1980

Ansel Adams

Associated Names
Ansel Adams

Artist, American, 1902 - 1984

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    gelatin silver print

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Virginia B. Adams

  • Dimensions

    overall: 48.8 x 39 cm (19 3/16 x 15 3/8 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1986.3.41

More About this Artwork

The top three-quarters of this horizontal landscape painting is filled with roiling, deeply shadowed clouds that tower over a line of buffalo crossing a grassy meadow below. Small in scale, the buffalo form a line that extends away from us at a diagonal into the distance to our right. Sunlight creates a bright reflection on the stream where the frontmost buffalo crosses, but the other animals are nearly backlit in the raking light. Trees, with branches whipping in the wind, rise along the left side of the painting, and the mountainous landscape to our right is lost in darkness under heavy clouds. The clouds above lighten from navy blue in the lower right corner of the sky to slate blue and white at the center of the painting. Small patches of blue sky are visible between a few breaks in the clouds, and sunlight falls on a cliff-like mountain face in the distance beyond the trees to our left. Another bank of parchment-colored clouds in the upper left corner, closer to us, contrasts with the glimmering light highlighting some of the clouds nearby.

Article:  Artistic Visions of Our Nation’s Nature

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Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Virginia B. Adams, Carmel, CA; gift to NGA, 1986.

Associated Names

Bibliography

1974

  • Images 1974, 21.

1985

  • Alinder, James, and Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr. Ansel Adams: Classic Images, The Museum Set. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Boston, 1985: 72.

Inscriptions

lower right on mount in graphite: Ansel Adams

Wikidata ID

Q64144891

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