TIOGA PEAK PAINTED BY EDGAR PAYNE

 

EDGAR PAYNE (1883-1947)
Tioga Peak  (3,513 m - 11,526 ft)  

United States of America (California) 

The mountain
Tioga Peak (3,513 m - 11,526 ft)   is technically outside of Yosemite National Park, a bit north-north-east of Tioga Pass. It is in the Inyo National Forest. Tioga Peak is north of Tioga Pass, at the head of Lee Vining Canyon. Highway 120 goes direct past its south and east slopes. It is easily accessible, a class 1 to class 2 scramble, from Gardisky Lake. The summit is like a rolling dome. It has some of the best views of the Tioga Pass region. Both Mount Dana and Tioga Pass are visible, from the summit.
Tioga Peak is a rounded peak, made of metamorphic rock. Metamorphic rocks make up a large part of the Earth's crust and form 12% of the Earth's land surface.  They are classified by texture and by chemical and mineral assemblage (metamorphic facies).

The painter 

Edgar Alwin Payne was an American Western landscape painter and muralist. He made his way to California for the first time in 1909, at the age of 26. He spent several months painting at Laguna Beach, then headed to San Francisco. In San Francisco he met other artists, including commercial artist Elsie Palmer (1884–1971). On  November 1912, Edgar married Elsie  Palmer.  As a couple they became well known in Chicago's art circle. Between 1915 and 1918-19, Edgar maintained a professional address in Chicago at the Tree Studio Building on East Ohio Street.

He earned his first major commission in 1917. In a bid to attract tourism, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad asked him to paint the Southwest, along the railroads' trek from Albuquerque to California. This commission not only solidified his reputation as an artist, it also forever linked him to Western America. Although he painted in Europe, he is most remembered for his work from the Four Corners area of the Navajo Nation Reservation, Yosemite, and the California coast. This area, from Taos, New Mexico to the Grand Canyon, became one of Payne's two main inspirations for the next twenty years.
The Santa Fe Railroad commissions were the turn of the century brainchild of William H. Simpson, chief of the railway's advertising department. Starting in 1892, with Thomas Moran, Simpson exchanged travel on the train, along with lodging at railroad hotels and meals at railroad restaurants, and sometimes even cash, for paintings, photographs, pottery, and jewelry. This endeavor lasted for decades and made the Santa Fe one of the largest collectors of southwestern fine art.
His lifelong obsession with the Sierras would lead him to produce a documentary film, “Sierra Journey”. In 1941 he wrote "Composition of Outdoor Painting", a comprehensive book on composition and composition forms. The book also explains landscape painting techniques, color, repetition, rhythm, and value. The seventh edition printing of the work was completed in 2005.

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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau

TIOGA PEAK PAINTED BY CHIURA OBATA

CHIURA OBATA (1885–1975)

Tioga Peak (3,513m - 11, 326 ft) 

United States of America (California) 

In Tioga peak in Sundown at Tioga, 1930, color woodblock print,
Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) 

The mountain 
Tioga Peak (3,513m - 11, 326 ft) is a prominent mountain that rises at the head of Lee Vining Canyon and north of Tioga Pass a few miles beyond the border of Yosemite National Park. Highway 120 goes right below the south and east slopes as it curves down into Lee Vining Canyon on the way to Mono Lake from Tioga Pass. This is a simple rounded peak composed of metamorphic rock like many of the peaks in the area. It is a very accessible straight forward class 1-2 scramble from Gardisky Lake that can easily be done as a day hike or less. The summit area is a huge rolling dome. Tioga Peak has arguably the best views of the Tioga Pass region. Tioga Peak is in the Inyo National Forest. There are no permits required for hiking.

The artist 
Chiura Obata (小圃 千浦 )  was a well-known Japanese-American artist and popular art teacher.
A self-described "roughneck", Obata went to the United States in 1903, at age 17. After initially working as an illustrator and commercial decorator, he had a successful career as a painter, following a 1927 summer spent in the Sierra Nevada, and was a faculty member in the Art Department at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1932 to 1954, interrupted by World War II, when he spent over a year in internment camps.
After his retirement, he continued to paint and to lead group tours to Japan to see gardens and art.
Posthumous exhibitions of Obata's works have been organized at the Oakland Museum, The Smithsonian Institution, and, in 2000, at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, a retrospective of 100 ink and brush paintings, large scrolls and color woodblock prints. In 2007 there was an exhibit in Yosemite National Park. The museum collection at Yosemite National Park contains several Obata prints of the park (see above). The Smithsonian American Art Museum organized an exhibition of Obata's Yosemite woodblock prints, which was shown at the American Art Museum in Washington, DC in early 2008 and then traveled to the Wichita Falls Museum, Wichita, TX (2008) and Federal Hall National Memorial, National Park Service, in New York, NY (2009).