Sudden and Solitary: Mount Shasta and Its Artistic Legacy, 1841–2008

William C. Miesse with Robyn G. Peterson

Paperback, ISBN: 978-1-59714-088-1, $35.00
288 pages  (8.5 x 11), full color throughout

Published in collaboration with the Turtle Bay Exploration Park

“Lonely as God, and white as a winter moon, Mount Shasta starts up sudden and solitary from the heart of the great black forests of Northern California.”—Joaquin Miller

Sudden and Solitary presents more than 150 years of artwork by the many visionary artists, past and present, big and small, who have been inspired by Mount Shasta. The mountain’s grand beauty has called to a myriad of artists, from early California painters Albert Bierstadt and William Keith, to modern masters of photography such as Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, and Michael Kenna.

As the authors state in the introduction, this book is an “attempt to characterize what Mount Shasta meant to the nineteenth-century American and Californian, and how those ideas have evolved in the visual arts up to the present.” There are many mountains in the West, but few offer the experience that Shasta does of being in a place apart and unique; it is no surprise that it has generated an artistic legacy of such grandeur.

About the Authors:

An art and rare book dealer, art publisher, and lecturer, William C. Miesse is the author of Mount Shasta: An Annotated Bibliography and The Mount Shasta Fact Sheet. He has been living at the base of Mount Shasta since 1981 and specializes in the scholarly exploration of California history, including John Muir, Joaquin Miller, Mount Shasta’s art legacy, Mount Shasta legends, and early California cartography.

Robyn G. Peterson holds a Ph.D. in art history and archaeology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has served as chief curator at the Rockwell Museum in Corning, New York, which specializes in the art of the American West, and as senior director of exhibitions and programs at the Turtle Bay Exploration Park in Redding, California. She is currently executive director of the Yellowstone Art Museum in Billings, Montana, continuing her focus on the art of the American West.