Albert Bierstadt (American, 1830-1902)
Hetch Hetchy Canyon
Oil on canvas, 1875
Gift of Mrs. A. L. Williston and Mrs. E. H. Sawyer, 1876

Albert Bierstadt's spectacular painting of Hetch Hetchy Valley marked the founding of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. Purchased the year after he completed it, the ladies wrote of their gift: "It is our hope that this fine painting as one expression of the best in American Art, will prove an inspiration to your pupils, and that [Mount] Holyoke will long continue to offer opportunities for the highest culture."

Bierstadt described his painting in a letter to these two ladies on November 3, 1876: "The scene is laid in the Hetch Hetchy Cañon, California which lies some twenty miles north of the Yosemite and is rarely visited by the tourist because of its inaccessibility. It is smaller than the more famous Valley but it presents many of the same features in its scenery and is quite as beautiful. The season I have chosen is late Autumn when distant objects are mellowed by a golden haze and when the grass is dry and yellow. A few Elk, now unfortunately becoming more rare every year — are coming up the valley in quest of one of the few mountain streams that the long dry season has not quenched. In early times the deer were very numerous — as many as a thousand head often being seen together."

This beautiful valley was flooded in the early twentieth century to provide a water supply for San Francisco and environs. A movement is currently underway to restore Hetch Hetchy Valley to its orginal state, beginning with the removal of the dam. Tom Philp of the Sacramento Bee won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing on his series about these efforts. For more information and the latest news on this movement, go to Restore Hetch Hetchy.