Google Lens entry:

Albert Bierstadt made this study for a larger work depicting a pass through the Sierra Mountains, several hundred feet above the Central Pacific Railroad. Here we see the sun rise beyond the distant Washoe Mountains, casting an ethereal glow over Donner Lake. To paint this scene, Bierstadt and his wife set out for San Francisco in July 1871. En route, they crossed the summit of the Sierras only 400 feet north of the wagon road that the doomed Donner Party had failed to reach before winter.

Few artists did more to popularize the American West than German-born Albert Bierstadt. Famous for his panoramic landscapes, his celebrity grew with the enormous canvases he painted from sketches made during several western trips to American landmarks such as the Rocky Mountains and Mount Corcoran. Bierstadt's travels took him across the United States and Europe, though he freely changed the details of places he painted in order to heighten the drama and excitement of his compositions.


Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
View of Donner Lake, California, 1871-1872
Oil on paper mounted on canvas
Gift of Anna Bennett and Jessie Jonas in memory of August F. Jonas, Jr.
1984.54

Albert Bierstadt made this study for a larger work that depicts
a pass through the Sierra Mountains, several hundred feet
above the Central Pacific Railroad. A contemporary writer
described the rich historical associations of the site:
This point [of view] was chosen . . . because right here were
overcome the greatest physical difficulties in the construction of
the road, while the immediate vicinity was the scene of the most
pathetic tragedy in the experience of our pioneer immigration,
for it was on the shore of Donner Lake that the Donner Party
were caught in the winter snows, and suffered horrors worse
than the death which overtook so many of them. The two
associations of the spot are, therefore, sharply and suggestively
antithetical: so much slowness and hardship in the early days, so
much rapidity and ease now; great physical obstacles overcome
by a triumph of well-directed science and mechanics.

“Two California Landscapes,” Overland Monthly 10 (March 1873): 286

Audio tour stop 324