After a morning of both heavy snow and rain, Ansel Adams (1902-1984) waited patiently for the clouds to part atop Yosemite’s famed New Inspiration Point. The narrow vantage point was difficult to navigate but optimal in order to create a “fairly strong negative” (Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, Little, Brown and Company, 1983, p. 104).

Yosemite Valley was home to Adams and his family for over two decades. In 1937, Adams and his wife Virginia took over the management of the studio belonging to her father, artist Harry C. Best, giving them a more permanent foothold in the park. Though they often spent several months out of the year in San Francisco, the studio – which the couple ran together – became both a business and artistic base where Adams created would create some of his most iconic images.

Like the painters of the Hudson River School, Adams sought to inspire appreciation for the natural world and elevate it as a symbol of national identity. With a lifelong affinity for classical music, astronomy, and a deep philosophical drive, it is no surprise that Adams was capable of imbuing his prints with a sense of existential realism that went far beyond documentation. He was awed equally by the capability of his artistic medium and the spiritual potential of the landscape – and managed somehow, wondrously, to fuse the two on a sheet of photographic paper. Here, Adams’ use of the Zone System – his own meticulous method for controlling exposure and tonal range – expertly captures the finest gradations of light, from the deep, velvety mountain shadows to the luminous whites of the freshly fallen snow. This precision not only conveys the impressive scale of the scene, but also evokes a timeless grandeur.

Printed in the mid-1960s, the present lot is a relatively early print of the image to come to market. The exquisite range of tonalities creates a dramatic and lush image, with an incredible level of detail. Other prints of this image can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., among others.