Albert Bierstadt painted "The Yosemite Fall" in 1864. This painting is on display in the Timken Gallery in San Diego California. This is an oil painting that has been painted on canvas, with dimensions of 34 ½ x 27 1/8 in. This artist was born in Dusseldorf in 1830 but raised as an American child. He was self-taught and in 1859 joined a U.S. Government expedition to map a land route to the Pacific. Many of his paintings were developed from on the spot sketches of the American western landscape. His popularity declined after he died in 1902, but he is becoming more popular now. This painting was made to show the beauty of America. He made sketches for this painting during a seven-week stay in the valley. He then painted a landscape of the Yosemite Valley in California. It is set in a natural setting. The front view places the viewer actually in Yosemite.
             There is a blue sky with stormy clouds, with some sunlight coming through. High Cliffs have the same hue of blue and violet suggesting that they are hard rock. Coming right out of the blue cliffs is a light white waterfall. This is a long waterfall descending past a light white-colored weathered cliff face. It ends in a cloud of gray-white mist a second waterfall then descends vertically leading the viewer to a green meadow. This places our attention to the dark foreground. The existence of matured gnarled trees shades a party of campers and their horses. The tree's vertical position points our eyes past the lower waterfall directly at the second waterfall. The mood of this painting is that of natural godlike grandeur. The artist utilizes all composition of art. The space he uses has great detail but yet he has the ability to have a vast scale of land in his painting. The vertical lines used in this painting allow us to focus on many important details of this painting. The waterfalls linear composition brings harmony to this painting allowing us to focus o
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