Albert Bierstadt earned his initial popularity with a series of landscape paintings of the Rocky Mountains. The works were based on sketches he made on a United States government expedition engaged in mapping an overland route to the Pacific. In 1863, he set out with a group of artists on his second western trip to visit the valley of Yosemite. This painting conveys the spectacular scale and natural majesty of Yosemite Falls. In the foreground near a grove of oaks and cypresses, several men gather at their camp. In the right corner of the painting are a sketching umbrella, a color-box, and other objects that Bierstadt took on the expedition.