Bear Lake, LVRR (c. 1898–99): Art, History and Details

Bear Lake, LVRR (c. 1898–99) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is William H. Rau (American, 1855–1920).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A distinguished commercial and documentary landscape photographer in Philadelphia, William H. Rau was commissioned in the 1890s by the Lehigh Valley Railroad to execute a series of scenic views along a new line. Realizing photography's advertising potential, the railroad company employed Rau to select picturesque subjects that might be seen while traveling by rail. Contact-printed from a mammoth plate negative, the landscape's shapes, textures, and tonal ranges are richly detailed.

Object facts

• Title: Bear Lake, LVRR
• Date: c. 1898–99
• Creator attribution: William H. Rau (American, 1855–1920)
• Culture: America
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from gelatin dry plate negative
• Dimensions: Image: 43.5 x 51.9 cm (17 1/8 x 20 7/16 in.); Paper: 45.3 x 53.7 cm (17 13/16 x 21 1/8 in.); Matted: 55.9 x 66 cm (22 x 26 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1988.88

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.
• Green, Tyler. Emerson's Nature and the Artists: Idea As Landscape, Landscape As Idea. Munich: Prestel, 2021.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.