Cinnabar Mountain, Devil Slide (1880s): Art, History and Details

Cinnabar Mountain, Devil Slide (1880s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Frank Jay Haynes (American, 1853–1921).

The work and its context

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

A gifted photographer, both aesthetically and technically, Haynes skillfully composed the various elements in this mammoth plate print depicting an expansive, arid landscape with the Cinnabar Mountains in the background. Railroad tracks diagonally cross the composition, providing visual vitality and narrative richness. The large glass negative and albumen printing process allowed Haynes to convey the panoramic view with clarity and fidelity, while responding to the scene’s stunning natural illumination. Beginning in the late 1870s, this Michigan-born artist spent most of his impressive career documenting the entire Northwest as the official photographer for the Northern Pacific Railroad until 1905.

Object facts

• Title: Cinnabar Mountain, Devil Slide
• Date: 1880s
• Creator attribution: Frank Jay Haynes (American, 1853–1921)
• Culture: America
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 44.6 x 54.8 cm (17 9/16 x 21 9/16 in.); Paper: 45.4 x 55.6 cm (17 7/8 x 21 7/8 in.); Matted: 61 x 76.2 cm (24 x 30 in.)
• Collection: Photography
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1993.217

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• “1993 Annual Report.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 81, no. 6 (July 1994): 143–218.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.
• Nyerges, Alexander Lee, Ansel Adams, and James R. Guthrie. In Praise of Nature: Ansel Adams and Photographers of the American West. Dayton, Ohio: Dayton Art Institute, 1999.

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.