Seal Rocks, Farallons

In the log kept by the lighthouse keeper on South Farallon, Joseph Macomber, there is an entry for 29 April 1872. That day the revenue cutter Wayanda landed the painter Albert Bierstadt on the island, about 30 miles out to sea from the Golden Gate, and on 1 May it took him off again. He had three days, and he spent them making oil sketches on paper. This is one of them, sea lions hauled out on the rocks above the surf. Before it was mounted on board he wrote on the back what it showed, in his own spelling, Seal Farralone Is Pacific 1872. The sketches went back to his San Francisco studio and fed larger pictures of the islands for the next 15 years. This one stayed with Bierstadt until his death in 1902 and was later owned in Brooklyn. Maxim Karolik bought it in 1946, and his wife Martha gave it to the Museum of Fine Arts the following year.