{
"data": {
"id": 156283,
"accession_number": "1992.12",
"share_license_status": "CC0",
"tombstone": "Bridal Veil, Yosemite, 1865\u201366. Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829\u20131916). Albumen print from wet collodion negative; image: 40.1 x 52.4 cm (15 13/16 x 20 5/8 in.); matted: 61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund, 1992.12",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Bridal Veil, Yosemite",
"creation_date": "1865\u201366",
"creation_date_earliest": 1865,
"creation_date_latest": 1866,
"artists_tags": [
"male"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "albumen print from wet collodion negative",
"support_materials": [],
"department": "Photography",
"collection": "Photography",
"type": "Photograph",
"measurements": "Image: 40.1 x 52.4 cm (15 13/16 x 20 5/8 in.); Matted: 61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"image": {
"height": 0.401,
"height_inch": 15,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.8125,
"width": 0.524,
"width_inch": 20,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.625
},
"matted": {
"height": 0.61,
"height_inch": 24,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.0,
"width": 0.762,
"width_inch": 30,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.0
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": null,
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Written in pencil on recto of mount: \"THE BRIDAL VEIL--900 FEET--YOSEMITE\"; \"/2\"",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 311552,
"title": "Selected Acquisitions",
"description": "Selected Acquisitions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 9-April 11, 1993).",
"opening_date": "1993-02-09T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 311875,
"title": "Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 24, 1996-February 2, 1997).",
"opening_date": "1996-11-24T05:00:00"
},
{
"id": 212265,
"title": "Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception",
"description": "Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA (organizer) (May 28-September 7, 1999); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (October 11, 1999-January 9, 2000); National Gallery of Art, Landover, MD (February 20-May 7, 2000).",
"opening_date": "1999-05-28T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 194095,
"title": "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"description": "Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 24-September 16, 2007); Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, PA (October 3, 2009-January 3, 2010).",
"opening_date": "2007-06-24T00:00:00"
},
{
"id": 383281,
"title": "Stories from Storage",
"description": "Stories from Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).",
"opening_date": "2021-02-06T05:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": [
{
"description": "CMA, January 28 - March 15, 1992: \"Selected Acquisitions,\" CMA Bulletin, 80 (February 1993), p. 69, no. 134.",
"opening_date": "1992-01-28T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "CMA, January 14 - March 27, 1994: \"Land of Sky and Water: 19th Century Photographs of the American West,\" Gallery 105, no exhibition catalogue.",
"opening_date": "1994-01-14T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "CMA, November 20,1996 - February 2, 1997: \"Legacy of Light: Master Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art.\"",
"opening_date": "1997-02-02T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; National Gallery of Art; \"Carleton Watkins: The Art of Perception\" 5/28/99 - 5/7/00. 71, Pl. 25.",
"opening_date": "1999-05-28T00:00:00"
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art (6/24/07 - 9/16/07) and Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittburgh, PA (10/3/2009 - 1/3/2010); \"Icons of American Photography: A Century of Photographs from the Cleveland Museum of Art\", no exhibition catalogue.",
"opening_date": "2007-06-24T00:00:00"
}
]
},
"provenance": [],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "In the spring, Bridal Veil Falls drops a torrent of rushing water 620 feet down into the Yosemite Valley.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "The grand scale of the American West was difficult to convey in early photographs, which were intimately scaled objects meant for the hand and the album. Starting in the late 1850s, a handful of photographers shooting landscapes and historical settings began producing \u201cmammoth\u201d prints, including the San Francisco-based Carleton E. Watkins. The seemingly gargantuan scale of these prints allowed a new, immersive relationship between the viewer and the image, enhancing that \u201cyou are there\u201d feeling.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q60760319"
],
"internet_archive": [
"https://archive.org/details/clevelandart-1992.12-bridal-veil-yosemite"
]
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Turner, Evan H. \u201cThe Year in Review for 1992.\u201d The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38\u201379.",
"page_number": "Mentioned: p. 69",
"url": "http://www.jstor.org/stable/25161388"
},
{
"citation": "Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.",
"page_number": "Reproduced: P. 369",
"url": ""
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/1992.12",
"images": {
"annotation": null,
"web": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1992.12/1992.12_web.jpg",
"width": "1109",
"height": "893",
"filesize": "806175",
"filename": "1992.12_web.jpg"
},
"print": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1992.12/1992.12_print.jpg",
"width": "3400",
"height": "2738",
"filesize": "5784628",
"filename": "1992.12_print.jpg"
},
"full": {
"url": "https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/1992.12/1992.12_full.tif",
"width": "4192",
"height": "3376",
"filesize": "42490492",
"filename": "1992.12_full.tif"
}
},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Andrew R. and Martha Holden Jennings Fund",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 156283,
"creators": [
{
"id": 1061,
"description": "Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829\u20131916)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Carleton E. Watkins American, 1829-1916\r\n\r\nBorn in Oneonta, New York, Carleton Watkins traveled west to California in the early 1850s, shortly after the gold rush. He learned photography in 1854 from Robert Vance, one of the earliest and best of San Francisco's daguerreotypists. Vance's landscape photography, unusually skilled for the time, may have influenced Watkins's work.\r\n\tWatkins was among the first photographers in the Yosemite valley, shooting there in 1861, and his mammoth-plate landscape photographs of the area are believed to have contributed to Yosemite's early designation as a national park. His Yosemite Art Gallery opened in San Francisco in 1867, but unlike most photographers of the time, Watkins is not known to have done much portrait work. His subjects included topographical, scenic, survey, agricultural, and urban views of California and surrounding states, including Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah. Through his friendship with railroad magnate Collis Huntington, Watkins photographed along railway lines and was able to reach distant sites. Huntington later bought him the farm where he retired. Watkins's landscapes were well received; he was awarded an international medal at the Paris Exposition (1867) and a medal of progress at the Vienna International Exposition (1873).\r\n\tThe numerous commissions and the work produced for the public market by Watkins combine clarity of vision with technical expertise. His work set the standard for subsequent photographers of western views, such as William Henry Jackson, Timothy O'Sullivan, and John K. Hillers. Although his life was difficult and his business sense lacking, his photographic efforts were protracted and indefatigable. Watkins's negatives were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906. He died several years later blind and insane. T.W.F.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1829",
"death_year": "1916",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "1992-02-24T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1865,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1865\u201366",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-05-29 08:07:40.479000"
}
}