Enoch Wood Perry

(American, 1831-1915)

Vernal Falls, Yosemite Valley 42 x 36in overall: 54 x 46in

Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired from the artist by a prominent San Francisco family, circa 1864.
Thence by direct descent.

The first non-natives documented to have visited the Yosemite region were members of the Mariposa Brigade, one of whom - Dr. Lafayette Bunnell - renamed the Yan-o-pah, Vernal Falls in 1851. Twelve years later in the summer of 1863, Perry visited the Yosemite Valley in the company of fellow artists Virgil Williams and Albert Bierstadt along with geologist John Hewston. The trip was well-documented by the travel writer Fitz Hugh Ludlow and in several newspapers, as well as in a contemporary painting by Virgil Williams (Along the Mariposa Trail) where the four traveling companions appear alongside the Merced River. Perryʼs painting of Vernal Falls, in turn, is believed to be the first painting of this well-known landmark.

Although painted nearly 150 years ago, Vernal Falls as conceived by Perry looked then remarkably as it does today. The fall is reached by an arduous climb 1,000 feet above the Valley floor through towering forests of sequoia and over rocky ledges paralleling the stream bed. The prospect of Vernal Falls as seen from somewhat downstream allows the artist to frame the waterfall by sequoias on either side in the time-old tradition of landscape painters dating back to Claude Lorrain, pushing the horizon line to the upper third of the painting to emphasize the falls' massiveness and height. The scene lends itself so easily to painterly adaptation that one wonders if Perry might not have consciously overstated the diagonal tilt of the sequoia at left with the aim of injecting this stately, true-to-life composition with a bit of angular drama.
The cascade drops over the rim at a thirty degree angle for about 240 feet, giving the granite ledge the smooth appearance of naturally polished stone. At the height of the flow in spring and early summer, the fall is noted for generating considerable mist in the pool below, which Perry also faithfully captures. Indeed, Perry is acutely sensitive to local color, surface textures, and lighting effects throughout, from the earth tones of the landscape, to the white-blue sheen of the water, to the ethereal robinʼs egg blue of the summer sky overhead. Painted with confidence and panache, Vernal Falls, Yosemite Valley is a prime example of an artist exercising his considerable talents while remaining strictly faithful to the visual fact of place.


Known by his friends as "Wood," Enoch Wood Perry was an internationally renowned painter who over a long and successful career produced numerous works of art that form a visual record of American life from the Civil War and the opening of the American West to the streets scenes and overstuffed parlors of the Gilded Age. Perry was born in Boston on 31 July, 1831, and from 1844 spent a number of years in New Orleans, working in the family hardware store and in a brokerage house. In 1852, when he had accumulated eleven hundred dollars, he left for Europe to study painting. His experiences at the Düsseldorf Academy with Emmanuel Leutze, at the Paris atelier of Thomas Couture, and later in Rome, gave him the classical training in line, color, and composition that he was later to apply with exceptional taste and discretion to American subject matter. From 1856-1858, Perry served as the American consul in Venice. Upon his return to the United States he set up a studio in Philadelphia and supported himself by painting society portraits.

In 1862 shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War, Perry left for San Francisco. He was captivated by the cityʼs exotic street life that appears in a number of his paintings and he also made frequent trips to the stateʼs historic and scenic spots including the Yosemite Valley. In September 1864, he exhibited seven of his works at the Fourth Industrial Exhibition of the Mechanicsʼ Institute in San Francisco, one of which bore the title Landscape, Sentinel Rock, Yosemite. Less than two weeks after the exhibition opening, he embarked on the Comet for Honolulu, arriving on 1 October. His arrival was noted in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, which suggested that the local government might want to commission the artist to paint portraits of the king and queen as "it is so seldom genuine artists visit the islands that the opportunity should not be lost." As he had done in California, Perry set up a studio in the center of town and produced studio-finished works of the scenic locations he visited, along with the recommended royal portraits. Perry left Hawaii for New York in July 1865, stopping en route in San Francisco and then Salt Lake City where he painted portraits of several elders in the Mormon church including Brigham Young.

Apart from a lengthy sojourn in San Francisco in the 1870s, Perry spent the rest of his life in New York City, specializing in genre scenes that combine skillful observation with painterly refinement. In 1868, he was elected a full member of the National Academy of
Design and the following year became an academician of the Academy.