Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, California, 1944 Oversized gelatin silver print, printed circa mid 1960s 31-5/8 x 39-7/8 inches (80.3 x 101.3 cm) (image/sheet) Credited and titled on gallery label affixed to mount verso. PROVENANCE: Carl Siembab Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts; Private collection. LITERATURE: A. Adams, Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs, Little, Brown and Co., New York, 1989, p. 162; A. Stillman (ed.), Ansel Adams: 400 Photographs, Little, Brown and Co., London, 2007, p. 245; A. Stillman, Looking at Ansel Adams: The Photographs and the Man, Little, Brown and Co., London, 2012, p. 128. "Manzanar, the site of one of the World War II relocation camps, is about fifteen miles north of Lone Pine. While I was photographing in and around the camp in 1943 and 1944 I made some of my best images. I knew the region well; it is roughly 150 miles from Yosemite over the Tioga Pass – or 400 road miles southward when the Tioga is closed by snow. While at Manzanar for a fortnight in the winter of 1944, Virginia and I arose very early in the mornings and drove to Lone Pine with hopes of a sunrise photograph of the Sierra. After four days of frustration when the mountains were blanketed with heavy cloud, I finally encountered a bright, glistening sunrise with light clouds streaming from the southeast and casting swift moving shadows on the meadow and the dark rolling hills. I set up my camera on my car platform at what I felt was the best location, overlooking a pasture. It was very cold – perhaps near zero – and I waited, shivering, for a shaft of sunlight to flow over the distant trees. A horse grazing in the frosty pasture stood facing away from me with exasperating, stolid persistence. I made several exposures of moments of light and shadow, but the horse was uncooperative, resembling a distant stump. I observed the final shaft of light approaching. At the last moment, the horse turned to show its profile, and I made the exposure. Within a minute the entire area was flooded with sunlight and the natural chiaroscuro was gone. The negative of Winter Sunrise is rather complex to print. It is a problem of agreeable balance between the brilliant snow on the peaks and the dark shadowed hills. I have often thought what a privilege it would be to live and work in this environment, perhaps best before the turn of the century when the efforts of man brought more beauty to the land than now, with our pavements, wires, contrails, and desolation. This photograph suggests a more agreeable past and may remind us that, with a revived dignity and reverence for the earth, more of the world might look like this again." (Ansel Adams, Examples, op. cit., The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust) "A good photo-mural is not merely the mechanical enlargement of a small photograph. The enlarged mural is a new and independent production, and the photographer who does not visualize in advance the final scale of his picture will usually be surprised and dismayed by the results." (Julien Levy, Introduction, Murals by American Painters and Photographers, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, exhibition catalogue, 1932) Adams met Levy's challenge with typical enthusiasm and technical brilliance, subsequently working on mural print commissions for The Yosemite and Camp Curry Company in 1935 and the US Department of the Interior in 1941 (unrealized because of the advent of the Second World War.) In his article ‘Photo-Murals', published in U.S Camera in 1940, Adams stated that mural-sized prints were ‘enlargements with a vengeance,' continuing that ‘Apart from optical and technical considerations, the size of the photograph has an expressive relationship with the subject.' In his image of Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, with its dramatic chiaroscuro, Adams achieved arguably his most successful expression of this sentiment. He must have believed this himself, as there was a large format print of the image hanging outside his own darkroom. This rare print of the image, in a medium sized mural format, was acquired from the prestigious Carl Siembab Gallery in the 1960s and has subsequently remained in the same family's collection ever since. Heritage is thrilled to have been entrusted with the sale of such an exceptional and beloved work on their behalf. HID12401132022 © 2026 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved www.HA.com/TexasAuctioneerLicenseNotice

Carl Siembab Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts; Private collection.

This work has recently had some superficial conservation. Conservation report available upon request. Sheet is flush mount to an illustration board.