| Medium: | oil on canvas, lined |
| Size: | 50 x 30 in (127 x 76 cm) |
| Inscription: | l/r "F. Schäfer", underlined, in the artist's characteristic block-letter hand |
| Provenance: | Offered 25 May 1982 by Butterfield & Butterfield, San Francisco, as lot 209 in sale 3205A (not sold); sold 23 September 1982 for $880 by Butterfield & Butterfield, San Francisco, as lot 172 in sale 3220P; offered 24 March 1983 by Butterfield & Butterfield, San Francisco, as lot 2652 in sale 3307P (not sold); sold 24 May 1984 for $2090 by Butterfield & Butterfield, San Francisco, as lot 1301 in sale 3432P. Sold 29 October 1984 by Christopher Queen Galleries, Duncans Mills, California, as inventory record 040 to private collection; by descent in the family in 1999 to private collection, San Francisco Bay area. |
| Reproductions: | 25 May 1982 sale catalog, Christopher Queen Galleries photo (color, 1984) |
| Description: | A slender, bearded man wearing a brown, broad-brimmed hat and red shirt (probably intended to represent John Muir) and carrying what may be a fishing pole over his shoulder emerges from a redwood grove, casting a shadow forward along a dirt path. Just to the left of the figure is a small green conifer; both are dwarfed by the giant redwoods that line the path a little farther back. The first redwood on the right has a large vertical gash on its base. Wild flowers dot the grassy foreground clearings on either side. Looking farther down the path, a tree leans over the path from the right; the forest becomes very dense and the path disappears into blackness. Through the forest cut the sky is orange near the horizon, shading to a hazy yellow at the top. (From a color photograph.) |
| Note: | The subject and composition is very similar to Sunset in Santa Cruz Mountains, California. In that painting there is a felled and sawn redwood log on the right. See the list of forest path scenes for several other works of similar composition. This is a Western version. |
| Identification: | The descriptive title comes from the (illustrated) 25 May 1982 sale catalog. According to Arnold Wallen, the Christopher Queen Galleries was the buyer of the painting in the (unillustrated) 24 May 1984 sale. That sale, as well as the (unillustrated) 23 September 1982 and 24 March 1983 sales, used the title "Stroller amidst the redwoods"; all four sales give the same size and signature descriptions, so I assume that the 23 September 1982 and 24 March 1983 sales are also of the same painting. |
| Other title(s): | Stroller amidst the redwoods (1982, 1983, 1984 sale catalogs); Hunter in the redwoods (Christopher Queen Galleries) |
| In index(es): | Title list, forest path scenes, sunset scenes |
![[photo]](../smalls/p/img0274.jpg)