James Hart Dyke: Yosemite brought together a new collection of landscape paintings inspired by Yosemite National Park, following the artist’s painting expedition to California in November 2023. Accompanied by William Mitchell and renowned Californian mountain guide Armin Fisher, James Hart Dyke spent a week exploring Yosemite Valley, covering many miles and vertical feet to paint en plein air from vantage points across and high above the valley floor.
Working from first light each morning, Hart Dyke produced oil sketches and studies directly from the landscape, capturing Yosemite’s immense granite walls, waterfalls, forests and glacial terrain. His subjects included El Capitan, Half Dome, Glacier Point, Sentinel Rock and the Mariposa Grove, with some studies painted from positions a thousand feet above the valley. The resulting works sought to convey the changing light, colour and extraordinary scale of the Sierra Nevada landscape, a wilderness whose dramatic geology has inspired generations of artists and naturalists.
These studies, together with paintings subsequently developed in the studio, formed James Hart Dyke: Yosemite, held at John Mitchell Fine Paintings in London from 21 November to 12 December 2024. The exhibition continued Hart Dyke’s longstanding exploration of remote and dramatic landscapes and his interest in the sublime tradition of landscape painting, adding Yosemite to the Alps, Himalayas, Patagonia and other wilderness regions that have shaped his work as a contemporary British landscape painter.