Drawn to Yellowstone

Video Statistics and Information

Video

Captions Word Cloud

Reddit Comments

Captions

- [Announcer] Your support helps us bring you programs you love. Go to wyomingpbs.org, click on support and become a sustaining member or an annual member. It's easy and secure. Thank you. [ Man Narrating ] When mountain man Jim Bridger first told the tale... of petrified birds flying through forests... of petrified trees, he was called a liar. But some of his stories were true. [ Man # ] "He told me he'd seen a column of water... as wide as his body and as high as the flagpole in Virginia City." [ Narrator ] Nathanial P. Langford, the Washburn Expedition, 1870. [ Man #2 ] No one believed it. They all thought it was tall tales of the West. [ Woman ] There was a lot of uncharted territory. Nobody knew quite what was in that mysterious Yellowstone place. [ Narrator ] Only art could truly convey the wonders of the Yellowstone, and one artist told the tale so well... that his name became forever entwined with this magical place. [ Woman #2 ] He was convincing an audience that something really did exist. [ Man #3 ] Moran recognized immediately that this was his land-- this was his inspiration, this was his muse. He began to sign his finished watercolors... T.Y.M.-- "Thomas Yellowstone Moran." [ Narrator ] It was art that inspired Congress... to make Yellowstone the world's first national park, and Yellowstone has returned the favor... by continuing to inspire artists of all kinds... down through the generations. [ Man #4 ] Half the cars that are going down the road... have an easel strapped to the top of 'em, and the people... are going out to do the plein air. I don't know. Yellowstone would be a good place to do that. [ Chuckles ] [ Narrator ] The Civil War had ended by 1865, but it had taken its toll on both the North and the South. Now, with the states united once again, Americans, ever the optimistic explorers, sought new horizons. So you have to remember that in the 1860s, Americans had almost beaten themselves to death in the Civil War, and so they were searching for symbols of unity and national identity. The great surveys of the American West really started in the year 1867. Following the Civil War, the nation was in desperate need... of natural resources for industry that really needed to flourish. [ Hassrick ] There were several expeditions that came into the park. They were private expeditions or state-operated expeditions. The big four were the, uh, 1869... Folsom-Cook-Peterson Expedition-- party of three prospectors-- the 1870 Washburn Expedition-- party of 19 men, 40 horses and two dogs... that received credit for discovery of the park-- the 1871 Hayden Survey-- 30 men or so, mostly scientists and packers-- and then the 1872 Hayden Survey, returning the following year. People were clamoring for their spot in history. So Thomas Moran went on the first expedition... into Yellowstone with Hayden as the guide-- The first United States sponsored expedition. There were expeditions before. And Moran was the artist, and Jackson-- William Henry Jackson-- was a photographer. [ Narrator ] But these were hardly the first visitors or the first artists... to frequent what would become Yellowstone National Park. The Crow's name for the entire Yellowstone Park area of the geysers... is, in our language-- [ Speaking Native Language ] "Fringe's Father." The Yellowstone was rich in all kinds of minerals, and so the minerals... were all great substances to create their art. And, of course, in parfleche art that we see, the tepee lining art, and some of the art... that is found on the men's shirts and the women's dresses... would be an expression of some of the things... that use the material that they got from the Yellowstone Park area. [ Narrator ] Seeking trade with the Crows, explorer John Colter broke off... with the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1806. After a grueling winter's journey, he became the first white man... to see the wondrous Yellowstone. In the following years, rumors and tall tales began to filter in... from the likes of mountain man Jim Bridger, who told wild stories about bubbling mud caldrons, and even sulphurous pools of hell. No one believed it. They all thought it was tall tales of the West. In fact, that's why Folsom, the first true expedition to go into Yellowstone, was very sketchy about even speaking... about his experiences in Helena, Montana-- because he believed he would be viewed as a liar. [ Narrator ] But Folsom's expedition, along with six decades of tall tales, piqued the interest of Henry Washburn, the Surveyor General of Montana. Washburn found out about the area, and he wanted to actually go in and see it as well for himself, and he traveled up the following year... and actually viewed the hot springs and the geysers and Lake Yellowstone... and so forth, and was very impressed with the area. [ Hassrick ] Among the civilians was a guy named Trumbull, and among the army ranks was a guy named Moore, and Charles Moore and Walter Trumbull... were actually the first Anglo artists... to come into the park and make sketches. They were both amateur artists, draftsmen, and those drawings and Washburn's report... became the first really public testament... to the marvels of what they called "America's Wonderland." He contacted the editor of a brand-new magazine called Scribner's Magazine. [ Woman ] Scribner's got ahold of these and wanted to publish them, but asked Moran to redraw those illustrations... so that they would be more appropriate for their magazine. [ Man ] He had the Charles Moore-Washburn... survey drawings available to him, but he used a great deal of his imagination. [ Woman #2 ] So Moran actually drew Yellowstone... before he ever went to Yellowstone. [ Narrator ] Thomas Moran had made the military artist's crude drawings... into sophisticated works of art, but the accompanying article only hinted at the Yellowstone's overwhelming beauty. He would have to see it for himself. As it turned out, fellow Philadelphian Jay Cooke, the railroad tycoon who had helped finance the Civil War, would buy his ticket-- literally. He would arrange for Moran to join the upcoming expedition... of geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden. In the 1870s, there were two great landscape painters... who were interest in the American West. One was Albert Bierstadt, a German trained in Düsseldorf, the second was Thomas Moran, a younger, less heralded artist... who had trained in England. They both received a letter of invitation to come with Hayden... to Yellowstone Park in 1871. Moran had the contacts in this particular instance. It was a set of circumstance that Bierstadt was not involved with. Moran had a kind of inside position for this opportunity, and Jay Cooke and Ferdinand Hayden did not know Albert Bierstadt. Bierstadt said, no, I think I'm busy this summer. I'm going to California to paint for Collis Huntington, the railroad magnate, and I'll earn a lot of money. Moran said, wow, this is a real opportunity. I think I better take it. Certainly he would have been intrigued with this place... with all of these fantastic features, and when the letter of introduction came from Jay Cooke's office, it mentioned Bierstadt to Hayden. It said, this letter will introduce our Mr. Moran, uh, an aspiring artist, that he will rival Bierstadt, we firmly believe. But Bierstadt was left out of this. Jay Cooke had offered to cover all the costs of Thomas Moran to go as well, and Thomas Moran did in fact go... and met up in Virginia City with the expedition. And it was fortuitous that he did, because that became the beginning of his reputation. [ Narrator ] This was not an easy journey for Thomas Moran, who had to travel from the east coast by train and stage coach, finally joining the Hayden party in Virginia City, Montana. There he would meet William H. Jackson, a disillusioned Civil War veteran... who had been jilted by his fiancée. Jackson boarded a train west to the end of the line, ending up in Omaha, where he took up photography. Well, photography in the early days in Yellowstone was difficult... because all of the chemicals and the very large photo apparatus... were all carried on the backs of horses and mules, and Yellowstone was a long, long way from the nearest railhead. [ Hassrick ] You can't imagine how tough it was to get here in Moran's day. It took weeks just to get here, much less to start the trip... into the park and around the park. So here is this man who's never been out West, he's never ridden a horse before, and he's trying to figure out how to now become synonymous... with this location that he will fall so deeply in love with. We're talking 500 miles from Corinne, Utah, where they had to get off the train... and then bargain with outfitters to place all the equipment in wagons... to go through Idaho, all the way north to Montana Territory, to Bozeman, Montana, and then back south... to reach the north entrance of Yellowstone, where there were no roads. The wagons had to be left, and everything had to be carried... on the backs of these animals. His darkroom equipment all had to also be carried, as well as all the chemicals that went along with it. It's remarkable that we got any photographs. Moran and Jackson met on the 1871 trip... in the summer as they headed to Yellowstone. They became fast friends. They became working colleagues. They worked side by side on that trip, and corresponded and were friends the rest of their lives. Both young guys that got along great, and what happened was, on the expedition, each of them fed off of each other. Moran really helped Jackson be able to frame up his shots, look for composition, and composition from an artistic standpoint. Dr. Hayden, who was head of the Hayden Survey, asked Mr. Moran to come along as a guest. And what he had in mind, we think, was that-- What if Jackson's photography didn't work? So Mr. Moran would be there as a fail-safe. He could make images, at least-- watercolor drawings. The two of them tag-teamed the view... of the mountains and the canyons, each catching what they felt their respective medium would do best. There's a lot of overlap between the two, but interestingly, there aren't a lot of direct replicas from one to the other. It was totally serendipitous that they were united in the field. They'd never known each other before. Moran bringing his exercise in color to the picture, Jackson with his black-and-white photographs-- all photography was black and white in those days-- coming together to make this union of artistic expression. People did not think photographs could lie. Everything that had come out of the Yellowstone region prior to Hayden coming in... was viewed as extremely doubtful. So, with the photographs, Thomas Moran could be free. He could be free to add the color. He could be free to paint, and people would believe him. And it did help with the idea that what he was painting was really there. [ Narrator ] Although photography had been known to the public since 1839, it was practiced only by skilled individuals. [ Whittlesey ] And these earliest photographers in Yellowstone history, and, indeed, all over the country, were considered artists. In fact, we have their photos labeled with pictures of them... that say things like, "Our artist bound for the canyon." [ Harvey ] The two, I think, learned a great deal about the differences... between making large glass-plate negatives out in the field... and sketching in a small sketchbook. [ Whittlesey ] Mr. Jackson had glass plates that they had to be very careful with, and they often would accidentally crack them, and so you'd see the crack in the photo. They had to take the glass plates, and then they had to be coated... with silver nitrate, and then placed in the camera, which was a huge box affair, 12 inches or so in diameter. And sometimes they were doing stereo images, so you had two lenses... shooting the stereo images at the same time. And then you place them in the camera and you expose it. That took, sometimes, an hour... to get an image prepared. [ Narrator ] In 1871, the Yellowstone area... was nearly the last unexplored territory in America, but the paintings and photography from the Hayden Expedition... would change all this, and would persuade Congress to make Yellowstone... the world's first national park. When Ferdinand Hayden came back from that survey, he took Moran's field watercolors... and he took William Henry Jackson's photographs. He took the maps and the notes of the places that they had visited... and presented them as a packet to Congress... and asked them if they would be willing... to set aside Yellowstone as the first national park. If it was just the paintings of Thomas Moran, the American public, especially Congress, wouldn't have believed... that such a fantastical place actually exists. I can think of no one else other than Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden... who actually used scientific language, probably for the first time, to describe geology to the federal government, to Congress, and to get it designated a park. Since Jackson and Moran were working for the survey, everything would have been available to Hayden... to put his best foot forward to make the pitch. There was some real question about whether Yellowstone was really worth preserving. They couldn't exploit it. There was nothing here to exploit. They couldn't mine it, they couldn't farm it, they couldn't do anything... but maybe have some tourists come to it. And so they set it aside for aesthetic reasons. I think it took the work of William Henry Jackson... and also Thomas Moran to actually, uh, beef up the foundation of the scientific work... that Hayden had brought forth. Our government needed something tangible to look at-- something that wouldn't lie to them. That color in his watercolors... was what Congress was able to see. "Oh. This isn't just... "a mammoth hot springs with the wonderful formations. "This is Mammoth Hot Springs. It's orange, it's yellow, it's blue, it's green. All of that is really, truly there," which helped to say, "Ah. This is maybe why we need to protect this." [ Narrator ] On December 18, 1871, only six months after the Hayden Expedition had begun, Senator Samuel Clark Pomeroy of Kansas... and Congressman W.H. Clagett of Montana... introduced a bill for establishment of a park... at the headwaters of the Yellowstone River. It was to be, in the words of the bill, "a great national park or pleasure ground... for the benefit and enjoyment of the people." There was little debate in the House, and only two questions were raised in the Senate. One by Senator Cole from California. [ Man ] "But if it cannot be occupied and cultivated, "why should we make a public park of it? "If it cannot be occupied by man, why protect it from occupation?" [ Narrator ] Senator Trumbull of Illinois rebutted, saying that there was a danger that some one man... might plant himself in front of the entrance to the park... and charge admission. On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill into law. But was this law really about protecting the park? It was a concentrated public relations lobbying effort... in the service both of the United States-- the national idea-- but as well, it certainly served the interests of commercial enterprises. The commercialization of the art of Yellowstone-- This certainly started from the minute that Yellowstone was a national park. [ Narrator ] While the railroads were more than happy... to take on the commercial marketing of this tourism wonderland... through pamphlets and posters, Moran began a parallel effort to market his own work. He was determined that he would take his place... alongside, or perhaps above, the famed landscape artist Albert Bierstadt. He would make Yellowstone the subject of his magnum opus. [ Harvey ] Moran is a brilliant marketer, but actually, I have to say, Moran and Bierstadt could teach us about marketing. Moran came home from the 1871 trip to Yellowstone... with grand ideas about what he could do. He immediately embarked on several projects. Working up his drawings into illustrations... for more articles in Scribner's Magazine, he worked on a series of beautifully finished watercolors for Jay Cooke, essentially in repayment for the $500 he had received. And those became the inspiration for a larger painting... that was begun in the spring of 1872. [ Kinsey ] ...a monumental 7-by-12-foot painting, The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone, which he worked on not on commission, but on his own in his studio throughout the winter and spring of 1871-72, finishing it just after the park bill had been signed. [ Hassrick ] Hayden came to the studio on a number of occasions. He was so impressed that he said, "We need to present this to Congress. "We need to have Congress acquire this painting. This will be the icing on the cake." [ Narrator ] Moran's watercolors and Jackson's photographs... had been effective in persuading Congress... to make the Yellowstone into the world's first national park, but Moran was intrigued with the idea... of selling his enormous painting to Congress. Scribner's editor Richard Watson Guilder... knew just how to attract the attention of Washington. He threw a party. [ Kinsey ] It was unveiled in New York in April, and it was unveiled to grand celebration... at Leavitt's Hall in New York City, which was a big auditorium. It was a single showing of a spectacular painting, something that had been utilized to great effect by his predecessors, the great landscapists Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt. I'm sure it was attended with spotlights and curtains... and possibly music. The painting was unveiled to great fanfare, and then immediately, within days, shipped to Washington and displayed in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol... and presented to Congress for sale. [ Narrator ] The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone... was a brilliantly colored painting in the tradition of J.M.W. Turner, the famed landscape artist Thomas Moran so admired. A testament to his eye for detail... and proof of his astounding journey into America's wonderland, the painting was seven feet high and 12 feet wide. The West is huge. The country is huge. Yellowstone is huge. The painting had to be huge. In the 1872 painting of The Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone, Thomas Moran has tried and succeeded... in giving you three views at once. He has given you the shot between the trees that he would have actually seen, which would have made the cataract of the actual waterfall... a vertical feature in a fairly narrow, steep, polychrome canyon. But the canyon itself is something that, as you wend your way through it, becomes wider and more panoramic. He added, for example, the Teton Mountains-- which you can't see from here-- he added the geyser basins, which you can't see from here, and he combined cliffs and walls of the canyon... in a way that were not necessarily the way... we're seeing it and identifying it exactly today. This was an ideal combination of what he had seen... here in the northwest corner of Wyoming Territory. Well, Moran was very free to move things... if he felt it would make a better painting. And there's a painting in the collection at the Cody Museum... of what's called the Golden Gate of Yellowstone. It's just south of Mammoth. And it's a big cliff area that he made more colorful than I've ever seen it. Now, I'm not saying he didn't see it that way, but probably he fudged a little. And also, there's a waterfall in the painting... that is actually around the corner. It can't be seen from the same spot where you see the rocks, but he felt free to move them together. Now, he didn't move in any palm trees because they didn't fit, but things that fit he would move around, uh, as he felt a need to. Moran had a now oft-quoted statement late in life that-- He said, "Topography in art is valueless." Uh, I think that this statement... has often been used in a way that he would argue with. If his job, as it were, were to record... let's say Yellowstone Park-- I mean, he could maybe move things a little bit, to improve his composition, but he probably would be not doing his job... if he took something from one side of the park... and moved it to the other side. That wouldn't-- I don't think that's what we're talking about. I think we're talking about compositional corrections. Bierstadt did this with Yosemite, where all of the major geological features-- El Capitan and the half domes-- They're all there. They're all accounted for. They're just in a more pleasing composition. So Moran could do the same thing. You didn't have to keep trees where they were in real life. You could make a tree frame your picture-- frame the composition, frame the-- maybe the sunlight on the falls. In the painting, Moran included a number of distinctive features... that allowed the viewer to identify with the space, to humanize the space in a sense, to allow us to envision and imagine... what this place might be like. [ Harvey ] It is Moran seated, sketching, interestingly enough, facing us. Standing next to him is William Henry Jackson, fiddling with the ears on his white mule, potentially putting away or getting out his photographic equipment. And on the promontory beyond them, Ferdinand Hayden standing with an American Indian, looking across the view as if unable to comprehend... just how splendid the view that they face really is. [ Whittlesey ] He is the exemplar of Manifest Destiny. While his compatriot standing next to him-- a Native American-- faces the other way, looking into the past, and symbolizing the idea that the Indian... no longer has a place... in the future of America. I think most American Indians, by this time, do not view the army as being a good thing appearing on their horizon. A number of us believe that he was kind of foreshadowing... the loss of the Indian. After all, Native Americans... had occupied the Yellowstone region for thousands of years, and we believe that this might have been Moran's little tribute... to, uh, the Indian, perhaps indicating that the Indian was disappearing from the region. In the 1700s and the 1800s, the big four tribes at that time... were the Shoshones, the Crows, the Bannocks and the Blackfeet. But historically, at least 26 total tribes claim... history associated with Yellowstone. The Crows went up there to do hunting. They liked the bighorn sheep and the mountain goats that lived on the high ground. The meat was good, and also, the hides of them... were really good for summertime clothing... because they were thinner and more pliable, and so it was a very rich take area for the Crows. [ Narrator ] In Montana on a limestone cliff in the Yellowstone ecosystem... just north of the park, archaeologists discovered... a group of Crow pictographs that date back 500 years. Pictographs are made with thick, naturally occurring pigments, black and red, mainly. They're put into these rock surfaces... with different techniques with palettes and paints. Some of them are blown on and smeared on. Various techniques, but using the native pigments that are here in the area. There's a pictograph... of a man holding a shield, and the symbolism there is that... when a Crow man is showing you his shield, he's gonna make war with you. You know, he's sending you the message that he's gonna come to kill you in battle. Then we see another image here of a hand, and it seems to be colored in. If it's colored in red, that means that there was a bloody encounter, where the Crow warrior had touched the enemy, and it was a bloody encounter. [ Narrator ] If Thomas Moran was indeed foreshadowing... the disappearance of the Native American, many scholars also believe he was making a statement... about the perilous future of the wildlife, once so abundant in the Yellowstone. A close examination of the painting... reveals a bear hidden in the trees... at the far left of the canvas. Down in the foreground, lying by the creek, a dead deer. And finally, high above the golden walls... of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, above the topmost peak of the north rim, a soaring bird. The animals had lived prolifically in the Yellowstone region for thousands of years, but in 1871, there was a massive slaughter. [ Harvey ] The dead deer makes it look like they've done their hunting for the day... and will probably haul it off to go have dinner at some point. Sometimes a dead deer is just a dead deer. [ Kinsey ] The eagle in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone painting... is a minute detail in a vast picture, but it's an important element at least if it's an eagle, because, of course, that's the national bird soaring over the landscape. And, again, another very subtle element... of claiming this place for the United States. Artists shaped exactly what people's perceptions and experience should be... in a place like Yellowstone. So you have this amazing, mythical location... that is in the landscape. And Moran went there, and he painted the landscape-- Not only painted it exactly from nature, but he captured the whole experience of the landscape. So the lighting was a certain way. The atmosphere was a certain way. He was painting where you should be standing when you experience Yellowstone. Where you should be-- almost what you should be feeling-- and then putting those little people in there. Again, that's where you enter the picture, what you experience in that landscape. [ Narrator ] Thomas Moran had sold his painting to Congress... for $10,000, a-not-so-small fortune in 1872. But his old rival, Albert Bierstadt, was still in the race... for fame and fortune, and the two were neck and neck. Bierstadt is also interested... in painting large, expensive pictures for the U.S. Capitol. He understands that they are interested in paying what was then $10,000, which is closer to high six and low seven figures now. And so he was rather upset when Congress decided... to add its first ever landscape painting to the halls of Congress. As a purchase, they bought Moran's Yellowstone Falls... instead of Bierstadt's California Sierra landscape. I'm sure that when Moran sold his large 1872 picture to Congress, that must have just burned Bierstadt. There was definitely a competition between Bierstadt and Moran. Al lost. [ Chuckling ] [ Narrator ] No one would have predicted the English-born Moran... would emerge the winner in a competition with the famous Bierstadt. Their backgrounds were as different as their styles of painting. There's some interesting pieces of the rivalry... between Bierstadt and Moran. And I think a lot of it had to do... with the changing ways that we viewed immigration... as we moved into the Gilded Age and after the Civil War. Moran is from England... and, of course, sounds like most of the other people here raised on the East Coast, and Bierstadt is from Germany. And I suspect Bierstadt had a fairly distinctive accent all of his adult life. You can see the two aesthetics... that developed in the 19th century. Bierstadt's aesthetic of a grand, dramatic, theatrical kind of presentation of nature... and sort of a Wagnerian approach to presenting the landscape, compared to the English aesthetic that Moran represents, a quiet, poetic, sensitive kind of landscape. But Bierstadt isn't half the painter that Thomas Moran is. He-- [ Chuckling ] He will not even carry Thomas Moran's suitcase. I'm sorry. [ Chuckling ] [ Narrator ] Thomas Moran's reputation... was not just as a painter of landscapes. He was a colorist. [ Harvey ] Yellowstone was the perfect subject for Moran, because Yellowstone itself is colorful. Even Hayden talked about-- This kind of color can't be replicated by artists, by man. This is something only found in nature. But then Moran found his perfect subject, because he was a colorist. [ Whittlesey ] His work is highly saturated. It's very intense. And I didn't realize how intense it was... until the first time I saw his paintings, not in a book, in the flesh. And I was mesmerized by his tonalities. I mean, just, uh-- uh, the most sensitive surfaces on those canvases, intense, saturated color that was just so harmonic, it was just spellbinding. [ Narrator ] By 1872, the wild, steaming, rainbow-colored wonderland called the Yellowstone... had been transformed into the world's first national park, and in the process, the life of the artist... who had been so important in the park's development... had also been transformed. Thomas Moran had become a star. But he wanted his works to have an even broader audience. He turned to the man who had made the first Christmas card, Louis Prang. [ Kinsey ] In 1873, close on the heels of the great splash... that Yellowstone National Park and Moran's big painting of Yellowstone had made, Moran was approached by a very interesting man. Prang Chromolithographs were extremely popular. [ Chatham ] Chromolithography was the early version... of commercial lithography. And what happened was... lithography became extremely popular in Europe... from about 1860 on through the turn of the century. Prang asked Moran to create a series of finished watercolors... of Yellowstone for reproduction in chromolithography... that Prang would produce as a deluxe portfolio, a gift box of monumental proportions... that could both enhance their respective careers, enhance the reputation of Yellowstone... and contribute, as Prang hoped, to science and art. A very complicated process-- arduous, expensive, painstaking process-- by which the originals are redrawn... by what was called a "chromist," an artist specialist... who worked to separate out each respective color... in the originals, carefully drawing it to scale by hand, each color on a different stone. Right there you had the separation... between commercial lithography and so-called fine art lithography, where the image is drawn by the artist. [ Kinsey ] Most chromolithographs, even the good ones, would be made from maybe 20 different stones. Today's color reproduction method requires four. We think that Moran's series for Prang in the 1870s... was done from maybe up to 50 or even 52 stones. The reason that those Prang chromolithographs were created... was so that everyone in the United States... could have an affordable picture of Yellowstone... based on Thomas Moran. [ Hassrick ] Unfortunately, the enterprise, as a business venture, did not work out terribly well. They ended up with way too many of these portfolios, and the public didn't buy them. It was an utter failure. This was not a popular product. It was very expensive for the kind of thing it was. Sixty dollars for the set. The average person could not afford that. It translates to today's money to about a thousand dollars. And he presented gift copies to all of the who's who of his time-- Queen Victoria, Ulysses S. Grant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. They gave away most of the approximately 50 copies that are in existence today. But they remain today very valuable collector's items... and are very rare and beautiful examples of the chromolithographic art. [ Kinsey ] There was a fire at the Prang factory... within months after the portfolio debut, and almost all of the remaining copies were burnt. It's very uncertain as to how this happened, why this happened. I'm not going to suggest that is was purposeful. But it is an interesting coincidence that Prang was very heavily insured. [ Narrator ] Hayden's 1871 expedition into Yellowstone... had opened up a forbidding wilderness. And from the moment Yellowstone became a national park, tourists began to arrive in droves. Subsequently, scores of artists... were eager to portray America's pleasuring ground, and commercial art became part of the Yellowstone experience. If it wasn't for those painters who painted Yellowstone... and then even made it somewhat commercial, the public interest in it wouldn't be there. And so, therefore then, it's a cyclical thing. It goes back to the art again. So the art started the interest and whet the appetite. And certainly postcards, photographs and-- and... subpar art, if you will, is also perpetualized from that. It's the cyclical relationship. So I think without commercialization, you wouldn't have the same interest and level of art... that you do have with the great artists and vice versa. [ Narrator ] As early as the 1880s, picture postcards were all the rage. One enterprising photographer was allowed to set up shop right in the park. Frank Haynes became Yellowstone's official photographer... and concessionaire. His unique postcards gave visitors a memorable image... of their Yellowstone experience. And he set the stage for the commercial artists who would follow, such as famed poster artist Frederick Mizen... whose Coca-Cola bears in Yellowstone launched an ad campaign... that would last into the 21st Century. The money spent on art for the railroads' See America First campaign... soon paid off and tourism swelled. By 1915, 50,000 people came through the gates... of America's national park, most of them arriving by rail. But even as the new century dawned, intrepid visitors came to the park by the hundreds, both tourists and artists. And some of the artists were adventurous women, although they would not obtain the right to vote until 1920. [ Hassrick ] Abby Williams Hill was an extraordinary woman. She was trained as an artist as a young woman. In 1905, she got the Northern Pacific Railroad... to underwrite her travels to Yellowstone Park. And she painted the falls with her children. She was camped out here on the rim of the canyon, and she set up a tent, and her daughters helped to hold the canvases down when it got breezy. And one day it got so breezy-- In fact, a huge gust came up, and it almost blew the two of them off, but it did blow her canvas into the abyss. And they watched it tumble down, 300 feet down. Along comes this fellow named Uncle Tom, and he and a colleague wrapped a rope around a tree and lowered him down in there, and they brought the thing back up. And they spent the next several hours brushing the dirt and stuff off the canvas. But the canvas is still here today... in the possession of the University of Puget Sound. Yellowstone is both a fabulous, fantastical place, in the sense of it being a positive, but at the same time, it is a deeply fundamentally dangerous place, which-- In its early incarnations, people described it as "hell on Earth." It was the place where hell bubbled up and was called Colter's Hell. [ Narrator ] Some artists came prepared... for this often frightening place. They brought their guns. [ Harvey ] Artists like Carl Rungius are starting to make incursions... into Wyoming and into the Rocky Mountains... in order to stake a claim in the part of the United States... that looks the most like home for them. Carl Rungius was probably the most extraordinary... of the animal painters, animalia artists. And when he came into the park, they took his rifle away, and he was sore about that and grumbled about it in letters home. But he had a tradition... of painting animals in the wild. There were a number of artists like that who did the same thing. They would shoot an animal, and then they would string it up between trees... or prop it up against something and try to animate it, and then they would paint the animal as if were still alive. I call it "Dying to be Painted." His paintings tend to be closer to an impressionistic way... of laying down the paint. But because he is interested in wildlife and geology, he is also attempting to give you the specificity... of the way animals are built in their native habitat... to appeal to the fish and wildlife crowd, which is growing in numbers and importance, as museums like the American Museum of Natural History... will hire Rungius to paint the backdrops in their dioramas... for the very animals that Rungius hunts and paints and eats. [ Narrator ] It would be 20 years before Thomas Moran would return to Yellowstone, again with his friend, William Henry Jackson. He wrote to his wife, Mary. "I've made arrangements with Frank Haynes, "official Yellowstone photographer and owner of concessions in the park, "to sell my Yellowstone pictures, "which look like a fine opening for me. "We remained at the Mammoth Hot Springs for two days. "I stayed at a hotel in preference to camp... "as did Jackson and a couple of the others. We have all had enough of camp life." Revisiting the landscape that made him famous, the artist declared that he would paint the scene again... and this painting would far outshine his 1872 masterpiece, and it would be even bigger. The great 1893 painting was done for the Wyoming exhibition... at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. And there it must have made an enormous impression. That one is 10 by 14 feet, a little bit larger than the 7 by 12-foot picture. At first glance, they look very similar. They are the same subject, the same basic compositional features. But side by side, they really have some very different effects. Well, the difference I think-- The first one-- If you think about what Moran's audience was for the 1872 version, he was convincing an audience that something really did exist. By 1890s, Moran now knew the subject intimately. He could loosen up a little. So his brush stroke loosened up. The colors were maybe even more exaggerated than they were the first time. [ Kinsey ] In 1893, people already knew the place. He didn't need to convince them that it was real. It could be romantic. It could be fantastic. It could be evocative. It could be exciting in different sorts of ways. He was responding to decades of artistic development, including the Impressionists in the 1870s, ‘80s and ‘90s. And certainly his style had evolved... to a looser, more confident kind of approach. [ Hassrick ] And so we see in the 1893 painting... that it's a completely different kind of sense... about what he's trying to portray there. First of all, there are no people in that painting. Second of all, the swirling lines and the forms... are not definite features in the geological landscape. They're not topographical details. They are gestures, trying to suggest. And the colors are stronger and much more emotional. [ Narrator ] Twenty-six million people... came to the 1893 Columbian Exposition, the Chicago World's Fair. With the music of John Philip Sousa flooding the grounds, they gobbled up the newly introduced Cracker Jacks and hamburgers... as they rode the very first Ferris wheel. They gawked at the hootchy-cootchy dancer Little Egypt... and the new Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone by Thomas Moran. Across the street, Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, which had been denied a place in the fair, set up shop and raked in a million dollars. And historian Frederick Jackson Turner read to a packed house... his thesis on the closing of the American frontier. The open range was closed, and so Buffalo Bill's Wild West talked about the closing of the frontier... and was a reverie of the passing of the frontier. And to some degree though, we looked to Moran's work being an expression of... "This is the West, and it's still vital, and it's still explosive." That poetic kind of tone suggests that maybe he too realized... that this was an opportunity... to pay reverence to a passing greatness in the West and its landscape. [ Harvey ] And what Moran has done is reinvigorated the paint... with this sense coming out of Impressionism... that paint can show the kind of exuberance he feels... in presenting a view like this. [ Hassrick ] Moran was not an Impressionist, and Impressionism was a French technique. And he said, "That's not American. I won't be an Impressionist. "Impressionism is European. I want my paintings to reflect an American aesthetic using an American theme." What's fascinating is that Moran can sustain that kind of energy. But I think part of it is that he's also competing... with a number of other landscape painters from his era. By the 1870s, Albert Bierstadt's paintings had become hardened and crystallized. [ Kinsey ] And, in fact, most of the late 19th-century landscapists... either died in obscurity or bankrupt-- their styles, their subjects, their paintings no longer wanted. [ Besaw ] Moran actually continued to paint for two more decades. He died in 1926. [ Narrator ] By the time of Thomas Moran's death, the United States had designated 16 national parks. Over the next few decades, art flourished in Yellowstone, even during the Depression. It was then that another young mother followed in the footsteps... of the fearless Abby Williams Hill. Marie Dorothy Dolph came to the park with her four children... and camped out in her station wagon, painting miniatures for tourists and for Frank Haynes. Dorothy Dolph painted the same scenes that Thomas Moran painted, such as the upper and lower falls... of the Yellowstone Grand Canyon. There was a market for her at the concessions, and the concessions sold her paintings, and the tourists could take the paintings in their suitcases... and travel back home with them. People became more and more interested in the park. The commercial pamphlets, the posters and all kinds of other things-- that was just a profusion of imagery about Yellowstone... and a real boom of interest in it. In the 1920s and '30s when people started having automobiles... and being able to go to the park on their own, there's a real interest in "See America First"... and going out and traveling. All of that was prompted both by and with images. [ Narrator ] In the 20th century, the style of art that had put Yellowstone on the map... was considered old-fashioned, and the decline would continue in the coming decades. The development of landscape painting as a subject... had its apogee in the 19th century. By the early 20th century, landscapes generally were considered passé. By the late 1940s after World War II... with the rise of abstract impressionism, figurative painting of every sort, where there is something that we recognize, was no longer popular, it was no longer favored. And landscape painting was no exception. [ Narrator ] In 1899, Thomas Edison made the first moving images of Yellowstone National Park. By 1936, Yellowstone had gone Hollywood. [ People Chattering ] Now, please, folks. Please, you can't stand any closer. That's boiling water. So please pull back. Hey, Sherwood, come here. Excuse me. I'll hustle back. You stay here. [ Male Announcer ] Well, the rush is on, and the folks who roughed it out here by stagecoach 75 years ago... would be mighty astonished if they could see the motor cars swarming into the park today. [ Narrator ] The movies were America's new popular art form. What better way to display America's pleasuring ground. [ Man ] Geologists have found that 12 different forests have grown here, one on top of the other. One on top of another? Yes. You see, the first forest grew, then a volcano covered it with volcanic ash. Then another started and grew on top of it... and so on for at least 12 complete forests. Why, that must have taken millions of years. It took a long time. [ Narrator ] As the 1960s began, modern and pop art were the trendsetting styles. It seemed that art had completely bypassed Yellowstone. Art of the West itself wasn't all that popular at the time as well, because it was seen as sort of a subset of American art... and not always as prominent... and thought that the great Western artists... had kind of come and gone by that time. One of the great resurgences of art... and artists coming to the park to find inspiration... was a program called Arts in the Park. Arts in the Park started-- Their first exhibition was in 1987. And so from that, artists were actually encouraged to go into national parks, Yellowstone included, and depict the landscape. And then it was sponsored. So you knew you were going to potentially sell it, at least show your work. [ Hassrick ] It was a trade show, and Russell Chatham was one of the artists. And Russell Chatham completely dismisses... any detail in the scene... in the service of creating his pictures... which are full of reverie and mystery... and a sense of poetry. [ Chatham ] In the painting of Paradise Valley, I basically ignored the mountains and left them out. And one of the things about the way I work... is, um-- And this is one of the difficulties. It's why these paintings sometimes take so long. Every single thing that's in the painting... has been positioned by your imagination. And so it could be wrong. It could be visually incorrect. And so-- Because you're dealing with other issues... of balance and rhythm and tension and unity... and all these kinds of esoteric things. So what I usually tell people is, "My goal is to tell you a lie that you will believe." [ Narrator ] Now in the 21st century, artists are still drawn to Yellowstone for a variety of reasons, from the profusion of wildlife... to the breathtaking landscapes... and even the devastating fires of 1988. One of the magazines did an article on Yellowstone after the fire... and asked half a dozen of us to do paintings of things... that were in Yellowstone after the fire... that showed some aspect of what the fire had done. One of the interesting things that happens after a fire... is quite often the next year the vegetation is profuse, and there'd be flowers and things that you didn't see there before. I don't see any reason why people wouldn't be interested in Yellowstone-- artists. This whole business of plein air painting, which is a rampant fad in the West. And you can't drive down the Paradise Valley... without seeing somebody on the side of the road with an easel... or a car going by with an easel strapped to the top of it. Even if it's an interest through a special about the caldera... and the fact that maybe Cody and Yellowstone will be no more... in another 10 years, then perhaps it will bring more artists to the area to depict something like that. [ Harvey ] There's no question in my mind... that the National Park Service has spent the last hundred years... preserving as much as possible... the viewpoints that Moran and William Henry Jackson would have had in the 1870s. As a result, we go out there because we want to feel this. We want to see these places. We want to recreate the excitement and the sense of wonder... that went along with the initial discovery. And I believe that the fact that we don't see exactly the same thing... makes us appreciate more of what Moran did for us, which was to capture in a single shot... three of the great majesterial qualities of Yellowstone, thereby encouraging us to continue our own explorations through the park. [ Kinsey ] Moran and others have certainly affected the way... we think about Yellowstone. Unquestionably. We go to Yellowstone today... expecting to see what they showed us. We haven't been there... unless we've stood on those outlooks, those promontories... that have been set precisely as views into those pictures. [ Narrator ] Paintings and photographs... of its rainbow-colored pools, spouting geysers and towering waterfalls... convinced Congress to declare America's wonderland... a national park. And after 14 decades, artists continue to be drawn to Yellowstone. [ Woman ] This program is supported in part... by a grant from Wyoming Cultural Trust Fund, a program of the Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources; Wyoming Community Foundation; Buffalo Bill Historical Center; Nickerson Family Foundation; Wyoming Arts Council through funding... from the Wyoming State Legislature and National Endowment for the Arts, which believes a great nation deserves great art; Park County Travel Council; Wyoming Humanities Council; and MDU Resources Group Inc. To purchase a DVD of Drawn to Yellowstone, visit www.drawntoyellowstone.com. Offer made by Drawn to Yellowstone, LLC.

Info

Channel: Wyoming PBS

Views: 2,019,148

Rating: 4.283154 out of 5

Keywords: Yellowstone National Park, Thomas Moran, William H. Jackson, Raechel Donahue, Peter Hassrick, Drawn to Yellowstone, WyomingPBS

Id: Y-ivZT-Gdto

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 56min 56sec (3416 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 13 2017