East Humboldt Mountains, Utah (1868): Art, History and Details

East Humboldt Mountains, Utah (1868) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Timothy H. O'Sullivan (American, 1840–1882).

The work and its context

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

By nature and by experience gained during the Civil War, O’Sullivan was ideally suited for the physical and creative demands required of the official photographer for the geological exploration of the fortieth parallel, led by the enterprising Yale geologist Clarence King. The goal of the expedition was to survey the geological structure and natural resources of a swath of territory 100 miles wide, from the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains across the Great Basin to the Rocky Mountains. While on the expedition in 1867–69 and 1872, O’Sullivan simultaneously pursued his own interest in perfecting a balanced, aesthetic style of landscape photography while providing a faithful record of the natural terrain. As typified in this print, he positioned the camera at a distance parallel to the majestic scenery, presenting a shallow, flattened depiction of space. The image describes in sharp detail the sheer beauty and rugged scale of this Western landscape.

Object facts

• Title: East Humboldt Mountains, Utah
• Date: 1868
• Creator attribution: Timothy H. O'Sullivan (American, 1840–1882)
• Culture: America
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: albumen print from wet collodion negative
• Dimensions: Image: 19.7 x 27 cm (7 3/4 x 10 5/8 in.); Matted: 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in.)
• Collection: PH - American 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 1992.238

Collection credit

James Parmelee Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1992.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38–79.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, Tom E Hinson. Catalogue of Photography. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1996.

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.