1882 Lithograph of Toroweap from Vulcan's throne
By: William Henry Holmes (drawings) Julius Bein (Lithographer)
Date: 1882 (published) New York, NY
Dimensions: 17.75 x 30.50 inches (45 x 77.5 cm)
This is an amazingly detailed & accurate two-part view looking the Toroweap Valley from Vulcan's Throne, on the edge of the Grand Canyon. From Edward Dutton's Atlas of the "Grand Canyon District."
The two views are continuous. On the left are seen the cascades of lava descending from the craters upon the heights of Uinkaret with intervening pediments of upper Carboniferous strata. The upper view shows the great lava streams descending from the Plateau, wrapping around the fine gable of Carboniferous strata and reaching to the brink of the inner gorge where they plunge into the bottom of the chasm.
William Henry Holmes (1846-1933) is responsible for the first-hand drawings from when he accompanied Dutton on his survey. Holmes had first worked with Ferdinand V. Hayden, on the first survey of the state of Colorado, but his images of the Grand Canyon reached an unprecedented level of quality and realism. They are simply among the best images of the West make in the period of exploration.
Edward Dutton was born in Wallingford, CT, on May 15, 1841, graduating from Yale in 1860. He served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and then joined the U.S. Geological Survey. He worked in a number of places, including Hawaii, Oregon, and the American Southwest, in particular surveying the Grand Canyon. In 1882, he issued his Atlas of the Grand Canyon survey, a magnificent document of the exploration of one of the last surveyed parts of the United States.
William Goetzmann wrote that Holmes was "the greatest artist-topographer and man of many talents that the West ever produced.........his artistic technique is like no other's. He could sketch panoramas of twisted mountain ranges, sloping monoclines, escarpments, plateaus, canyons, fault blocks, and grassy meadows, that accurately depicted humdreds of miles of terrain........his illustrations for Dutton's 'Tertiary History of the Grand Canon District' are masterpieces of realism and draftsmanship as well as feats of imaginative observation."
Condition: These two continuous tinted lithographs are in A condition with warm beige colors, bordered in a thin black frame
Inventory #12287
1932 S. Halsted #200 Chicago, IL 60608 (312) 496-3622