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lote/william holmes the grand canon at the foot of the toroweap looking VyUob84 629576342 / En venta

lote/william holmes the grand canon at the foot of the toroweap looking VyUob84 629576342

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lote/william holmes the grand canon at the foot of the toroweap looking VyUob84 629576342

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William Holmes "The Grand Canon at the foot of the Toroweap - Looking

William H. Holmes (American, 1846–1933). Panorama from Point Sublime, 1882. Chromolithograph after Holmes's original illustration for Clarence Dutton's Tertiary History of the Grand Cañon District, United States Geological Survey Monograph II, Washington, D.C., 1882. A monumental panoramic view of the Grand Canyon from Point Sublime on the North Rim, rendered in warm ochre and sienna tones with remarkable geological precision. Holmes — simultaneously a trained artist and geologist — captured the canyon's layered stratigraphy with scientific fidelity while achieving a compositional grandeur that rivals the great landscape painters of his era. Widely regarded as among the finest scientific illustrations ever produced in America, the Holmes-Dutton Grand Canyon plates occupy a singular place in the history of both geological survey art and American printmaking. Presented in a carved burled wood frame with gilt liner. Holmes renders the canyon not as spectacle alone but as argument. Every stratum of Kaibab limestone, Coconino sandstone, and Vishnu schist is legible, each horizontal band a chapter in a geological chronicle spanning hundreds of millions of years. The palette moves from deep burnt sienna and Venetian red in the foreground cliffs through warm ochre on the middle terraces to the pale buff and grey of distant escarpments dissolving into sky. This tonal sequence was achieved through the layered printing process that Julius Bien and Co. had brought to its American zenith. Holmes was simultaneously a geologist, an artist, and a topographic draftsman of exceptional precision. Nowhere is that triple competence more evident than in this plate, which served both as scientific record and as one of the most powerful images of the American West produced in the 19th century. Holmes had accompanied Clarence E. Dutton on survey expeditions across the Colorado Plateau beginning in the mid-1870s, developing the intimate knowledge of the canyon's geology that gives his illustrations their unusual authority. His draftsmanship was not merely decorative. It was analytical, trained to translate three-dimensional geological structure into two-dimensional form with a fidelity that photographs of the era could not yet achieve. The publication from which this plate originates is among the most distinguished scientific volumes produced in 19th-century America. "Tertiary History of the Grand Canon District, with Atlas" was the inaugural monograph of the United States Geological Survey, an agency established by act of Congress in 1879 to systematically map and document the public lands of the American West. Dutton, a geologist and U.S. Army officer who had joined explorer John Wesley Powell's Colorado Plateau surveys in 1875, authored the text. The monograph appeared in 1882 as the first in the Survey's prestigious Monograph series, setting a standard of scientific and visual ambition that subsequent volumes would struggle to match. The accompanying atlas, printed by Julius Bien and Co. of New York, one of the foremost lithographic firms in the United States at the time, contains twenty-two maps and panoramic plates. The atlas is bound in dark brown cloth stamped in gilt, a physical object as deliberate and formal as the science it contains. Contributions by Thomas Moran, already celebrated for his monumental Grand Canyon canvases, appear alongside Holmes's plates, making the atlas a collaboration between two of the most important visual interpreters of the American West. Dutton famously declared the Grand Canyon "by far the most sublime of all earthly spectacles," and Holmes gave that declaration its definitive visual form. The publication played a direct role in shaping public and governmental understanding of the canyon, contributing to the broader 19th-century movement that would eventually lead to its federal protection. This plate, with its panoramic sweep and geological precision, is among the most reproduced and recognized images to emerge from that foundational survey. Provenance: private Colorado, USA collection; private collection of a Private Colorado Family Condition: Mounted behind glass in custom matte and frame; has not been examined outside of glass. Creasing with some tearing to central fold, as well as minor cockling near fold. Otherwise, lithograph appears to be in very good condition with clear imagery. Frame in excellent overall condition with suspension wire on verso for display. Identification label at lower left of frame.

Estimación:€3,471.52

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