Painted in 1885, Indians at Campfire, Yosemite Valley, California is a painting by a renowned artist named Thomas Hill. Hill was born on September 11, 1829, in England. When he was fifteen years old, he and his family moved to the United States. After Hill had turned twenty-four, he joined the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and was highly recognized for his numerous paintings of the vast California landscape. During the time Hill was a student at the Art Academy, he travels to the White Mountains and Yosemite Valley, which ended up becoming the primary subject of his painting. "In fact, the U.S Army years earlier had evicted the Indians who once inhabited the valley. And in 1864, the federal government set aside a large tract of land there
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The extraordinary art that is made with precision, color makes it appears to be more of a photographic image than a painting. Indians at Campfire, Yosemite Valley, California has clearly depicted the natural world through the eyes of the artist. It is an effortless representation of nature meeting the eye of the viewer as Hill attempts to capture the passing moment through the use of time and space. Even though he was not born as an artist, it is not hard to believe that he later became a very successful artist. The manner in which Hill has managed to capture the scenery and various components of the Yosemite Valley landscape makes his unique technique quite admirable. Hill has used some of the visual elements of arts such as mountains shapes, sunlight, texture, earthy colors, swooping lines, space, and mass to add life to the painting by creating the smoke from the campfire, the waterfall, the group of people at the center of the picture, the atmosphere, the mountains appears prominently in his landscape composition. Also, the mountains are overlapping the Indians in this painting because it is impossible to recognize what these individuals are doing and one can assume that they are in some form of religious ritual that completely seduced from the rest of the Indian population. Although, Hill focuses his attention more on landscape that behind the Indians figures, his painting could be a description of what Yosemite was like in the 1800 and when the Indians were living peacefully in nature before the involvement of the United States
The extraordinary art that is made with precision, color makes it appears to be more of a photographic image than a painting. Indians at Campfire, Yosemite Valley, California has clearly depicted the natural world through the eyes of the artist. It is an effortless representation of nature meeting the eye of the viewer as Hill attempts to capture the passing moment through the use of time and space. Even though he was not born as an artist, it is not hard to believe that he later became a very successful artist. The manner in which Hill has managed to capture the scenery and various components of the Yosemite Valley landscape makes his unique technique quite admirable. Hill has used some of the visual elements of arts such as mountains shapes, sunlight, texture, earthy colors, swooping lines, space, and mass to add life to the painting by creating the smoke from the campfire, the waterfall, the group of people at the center of the picture, the atmosphere, the mountains appears prominently in his landscape composition. Also, the mountains are overlapping the Indians in this painting because it is impossible to recognize what these individuals are doing and one can assume that they are in some form of religious ritual that completely seduced from the rest of the Indian population. Although, Hill focuses his attention more on landscape that behind the Indians figures, his painting could be a description of what Yosemite was like in the 1800 and when the Indians were living peacefully in nature before the involvement of the United States