by Cornelia Feye
April 10, 2025
Visitors are invited to compare two paintings that look similar but are painted by two very different artists, one in the 19th century and the other in 2012.
The first painting (above left), Cho-Looke, The Yosemite Fall (1864) in the Timken’s permanent collection since 1965, was painted by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902). He was born in Germany, immigrated with his parents to the United States when he was one year old, but went back to Europe to study traditional painting techniques in his early 20s. After he returned to the US, he joined the Lander Expedition in 1859 to complete a series of idealized landscape paintings of the Rocky Mountains which had never been seen before on the East Coast. In 1863, Bierstadt set out on a second western trip. In California, Albert Bierstadt was inspired to paint Cho-Looke, or Yosemite Falls. In several of his paintings from the Landers expedition, Bierstadt pasted Alpine Mountains like the Matterhorn into the background of the Rocky Mountains. Who was going to correct him? Nobody had been there to compare, and Bierstadt had the sketches from his time in Switzerland already in his studio. But in the painting of Yosemite Falls, four years later, photography was already available and his brother Charles had actually taken photos of Yosemite. Bierstadt had visual evidence of the scene, which didn’t keep him from idealizing the scene significantly.
Few people had seen this awesome landscape. Yosemite was not a National Park yet, instead, artists like Bierstadt participated in the expedition to depict the land as a potential piece of real estate for settlers interested in coming out West and populating this desirable landscape. Manifest destiny promised that this land was there for the taking, and the indigenous original inhabitants of the land were either absent or shown as peaceful and romanticized figures in the large-scale tableaus. Bierstadt’s title Cho-Looke references the indigenous title of Yosemite Falls, but he doesn’t depict any of the original inhabitants.
In the 1864 painting, Bierstadt leads the viewer into a pleasant, verdant, valley with the Yosemite Falls looming in the background. A small camp looks inviting at sunrise, morning light filtering through California oak trees. Half of the camp is shaded by the Yosemite dome, while the other half forms a sunny background where the mighty Yosemite Falls flow into a mild body of water (not pond not river) perfect for the expedition party to bathe or water their horses. One man in the foreground is still in his blue sleeping bag, while others cook coffee over the open fire, and several men warm their hands next to the peacefully grazing horses. Nothing bad could happen in this idyllic scene. Who wouldn’t want to be there, and glance in awe up at this natural wonder? Any indigenous people, who may lay claim on this verdant valley have been carefully omitted. This is a propaganda painting, and Bierstadt took poetic license to present it as appealing as possible. “It is an idyllic view of nature, at a time when the society of the United States was torn apart by the Civil war,” Derrick Cartwright, curator of the Timken remarks.
The Bierstadt painting was a perfect escapist fantasy for East Coast viewers, who dreamed of getting away to this untouched land of pure nature – which of course it wasn’t.
The land was already occupied and traveling out West at the time was not the picnic the Bierstadt painting suggests. Traveling was hard, dangerous, full of deprivation as many settlers would find out.
In the foreground on a rock, lay the tools of Bierstadt’s trade: a painter’s box and an easel. “The artist is present,” says Cartwright, who conceived this intervention to contrast the Bierstadt with a painting by contemporary artist Kent Monkman from 2012 (above right). Monkman copied the Bierstadt painting fairly faithfully, down to the red signature on the bottom left.
But the differences are significant. Born in 1965, Kent Monkman is a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba, Canada). He lives and works between New York City and Toronto. His work has been widely collected in both Canada and the United States and can be found in the permanent collections of many museums, including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, and the Denver Art Museum.
Monkman’s painting The Fourth World is almost twice the size of the Bierstadt, and it is much brighter, possibly because the artist copied it from a reproduction, and not from the original. Instead of the inviting camp in the foreground of Bierstadt’s painting, a herd of buffalo is driven into the valley by two riders and a man on foot through the open gate of two rust-colored arches that look like Richard Serra sculptures. The riders are blond, and wear camouflage, two fire their rifles. The small heard of buffalo, including several calves, marches obediently through the gate. It is not immediately apparent whether the men hunt the buffalo, or are actually driving them to safety. The man on foot waves his camouflage shirt to make sure none of the buffalo go astray. In his two-volume memoir, written in the voice of his alter ego, Miss Chief Testickle, Monkman describes the scene:
“I knew from what the songbirds had told me that there was one small herd of paskwâwimostoswak (buffalo) still remaining. I found them and asked their permission to take them into the underground biome until it was safe to return.”
Monkman’s Fourth World, depicts a parallel universe in which three men in camouflage, and the sculptures of another contemporary artist’s, help to guide the last buffalo to safety and prevent their extinction. Art as a channel to an alternative reality.
Bierstadt invented an alternative reality without first nation people, inviting settlers to take this land from the indigenous inhabitants. Monkman invented an alternative reality, where the crimes of the settlers are redeemed. “It is an inversion of the perspective of Western European culture, to an indigenous perspective,” Cartwright says.
As previous interventions, these two paintings provide an intriguing dialogue between one of the Timken’s favorite paintings and a contemporary counterpart. When I was visiting, visitors of all ages clustered around the two works hanging side by side. They were looking closely, comparing one to the other, delighted when they found differences. They also enjoyed a small black and white print by Kent Monkman, where an indigenous person in high heels spanks a cowboy laying over their knees with his pants down. Here Justice—itstitle—is served a bit more obviously than in the Fourth World painting.
A dose of revisionist history feels good at a time when the ghosts of manifest destiny and annexing of public lands seem to rise again. An opportunity to show an indigenous point of view of an old favorite painting.
San Diego’s Timken Museum in Balboa Park:
Reconsidering Bierstadt: Kent Monkman
March 26-June 8, 2025
