An American artist known for his California landscapes, Hiram Reynolds Bloomer was born in New York on December 19, 1845. He came to California with his family in 1852 and settled in San Francisco.
He received an early appreciation of nature and introduction to painting, as his father was an artist and botanist. Having decided upon an art career, he became a pupil of Virgil Williams, Thomas Hill, J.B. Wanderforde and Stephen William Shaw from 1868-73. In 1874, Bloomer held a successful auction of his own paintings and then traveled to Paris. The years 1874-79 were spent in Paris where he took over Whistler’s old studio while studying with Charles Auguste Emile Durand and Leon Germaine Pelouse. He went on sketching trips to the neighborhood of the Forest of Fontainebleau, staying at the village of Barbizon. He was one of the party, along with Robert Louis Stevenson, that discovered the nearby hamlet of Grez.. His Old Bridge at Grez was purchased by the French government.
The years 1879-90 were spent in England where he exhibited regularly at The Royal Academy, London
Bloomer returned to the United States and studied at the National Academy of Design in New York for two years. In 1892 he returned to San Francisco and resumed his residence and studio at 506 Battery Street. Early in his career he concentrated on portraiture, but after returning from Europe, he turned his attention to the local landscape. His works done after this time show the influence of the Barbizon painters as he turned his attention to the beauty in the local landscapes, which early on, showed the influence of Thomas Hill, depicting magnificent mountain subjects like Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta and Yosemite.
The exquisite landscape of the American West in California was a favorite subject of Bloomer upon his return from Paris and New York in 1892. He painted Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta, and Yosemite Valley. In Yosemite Valley, presence of the Ahwahnechee was first recorded by white people in the context of the California Gold Rush in the mid-19th century. The official canon says that the Ahwahnechee of Yosemite "became extinct" as a people in the 19th century; however, the US federal government has evicted Yosemite Native people from the park in 1851, 1906, 1929, and 1969.[1 Bloomer recorded the wigwams the Ahwahnechee built in this work: The people lived in camps at the bottom of the valley, in huts known as o-chum. These small homes were built with pine for the framing and supports, using the wood in a teepee like structure with a diameter of about twelve feet.
As he painted many works of California during his time in Europe the date is unknown but likely between the years 1875 and 1895. The Great Quake of 1906 burned a great amount of Bloomer's work; books, photos, etchings, proofs and many souvenirs; along with works "about town" that were in private galleries and clubs.
Please note: The watercolour sketch for this work was offered at Sothebys London Sale, November 15, 2001
