Pacific Arcadia
Subtitle: images of California, 1600-1915
By: Claire Perry.
Contributors: Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University.; San Diego Museum of Art.; Joslyn Art Museum.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 242
Subjects: Art, American -- California -- Exhibitions; Art -- Exhibitions; California -- In art -- Exhibitions
Description: This illustrated catalog presents a fascinating cultural history of an idyllic vision of California that still figures prominently in the American imagination. Currier and Ives lithographs and the work of early European cartographers are juxtaposed with photographs by Carleton E. Watkins, Arnold Genthe, and Eadweard Muybridge, and paintings by Albert Bierstadt, James Walker, and William Hahn, among others.

Perry investigates how and why this vision of a Pacific paradise was developed and marketed to the public, taking as her subject the images produced by early visitors and residents confronted by the peculiarities of California's landscape, the abundance of its natural resources, and the omnipresence of the vast Pacific.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [215]-229) and index.
Exhibition itinerary: Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, April 21-June 27, 1999 ; San Diego Museum of Art, October 30, 1999-January 9, 2000 ; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, February 19-April 30, 2000.