{
 "schema": "nephos.method.v1",
 "slug": "bierstadt-merced-river-1866",
 "title": "Albert Bierstadt, Merced River, Yosemite Valley (1866), Met 09.214.1",
 "urls": [
  "/studies/bierstadt-merced-river-1866"
 ],
 "written": {
  "summary": "The Met links the 1866 studio canvas to Bierstadt’s August 1863 Yosemite visit. Its 1985 catalogue also reports Hendricks’s objection to the title. A later transcription of a camp inscription supplies a dated presence in Yosemite; it does not date this painting’s source sketch.",
  "items": [
   {
    "quote": "not the correct title for the work",
    "source": "The Met catalogue (1985), p. 328, reporting Gordon Hendricks, Albert Bierstadt (1974), CL-171; the original Hendricks entry was not inspected.",
    "url": "https://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/api/collection/p15324coll10/id/40861/download"
   },
   {
    "quote": "Camped here August 21, 1863. A. Bierstadt, Virgil Williams, E. W. Perry, Fitzhugh Ludlow.",
    "source": "Hutchings, In the Heart of the Sierras (1888), chapter XXV, Register Rock; later transcription of a reported 1863 inscription.",
    "url": "/studies/bierstadt-merced-river-1866#rc-hutchings"
   }
  ]
 },
 "records": [
  {
   "name": "The Met’s object record and catalogues",
   "detail": "The current title and studio history, the published title dissent, and the 1920 catalogue’s description of clouds in this canvas.",
   "url": "https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10150"
  },
  {
   "name": "Ludlow’s account of the journey, published in 1864",
   "detail": "A travelling companion’s retrospective seasonal description, not daily cloud observations.",
   "url": "https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1864/06/seven-weeks-in-the-great-yo-semite/628596/"
  },
  {
   "name": "Camp Union, Sacramento: NOAA/CDMP and MRCC",
   "detail": "Daily rain in calendar August 1863, used strictly as regional context. Camp Union is selected separately from the other Sacramento observers.",
   "url": "https://mrcc.purdue.edu/files/FORTS/Data/DAILYBYSTATE/CA_Sacramento.data.csv"
  }
 ],
 "gaps": [
  "The title objection has not been resolved; no replacement location is established.",
  "No securely matched field sketch, depicted day or continuous valley itinerary is in hand.",
  "No local rain, cloud or river measurement has been verified. The Camp Union originals were not inspected."
 ],
 "tests": [
  {
   "claim": "Does the weather establish the painted place?",
   "result": "No. A regional register cannot resolve the disagreement about the title."
  },
  {
   "claim": "Does the canvas preserve the sky Ludlow described?",
   "result": "The museum describes clouds in the picture; Ludlow describes a cloudless season. Their accounts cannot establish what Bierstadt changed in an identifiable sketch."
  },
  {
   "claim": "What does the Camp Union record add?",
   "result": "The digitized rain record supplies a rainless month at the lowland station. It does not measure Yosemite rainfall or cloud cover."
  }
 ],
 "finding": "The records put the attributed source journey in context. They cannot settle the canvas’s locality, date its sky or prove a change from a particular sketch.",
 "verdicts": [
  {
   "claim": "The painted locality",
   "verdict": "Unknown",
   "reason": "The Met’s Yosemite attribution stands alongside its published report of Hendricks’s objection to the title."
  },
  {
   "claim": "Weather depicted in the canvas",
   "verdict": "Unknown",
   "reason": "Ludlow’s seasonal words and Camp Union’s regional rain record cannot supply a local painted day."
  }
 ],
 "limits": [
  "Calendar August is an analyst-selected context month, not a claim that Bierstadt stayed in Yosemite every day.",
  "Hutchings links the reported camp visit to The Domes of the Yo Semite, a different painting.",
  "MRCC may fill daily blanks with zeros when they reconcile with the observer’s monthly rain total.",
  "Blank measurements at Fort Miller and Thomas Logan’s Sacramento station remain missing, never zero."
 ]
}