Christian August Jorgensen (1860-1935) was a Norwegian-born American landscape painter, and is mostly known for his paintings of Yosemite Valley and the California Missions. Originating from Norway, his family immigrated to the United States to San Francisco, California a few years after Jorgensen's father died of tuberculosis. Jorgensen met Virgil Williams, his future mentor, right before the San Francisco School of Design opened in 1874. He was only 14 when he was spotted sketching by Williams, and was invited to be the first free student. Jorgensen's lifelong gravitation for classical compositions grew during Williams' mentorship. Thomas Hill was another influential mentor of Jorgensen, and thus he developed a more impressionistic technique and learned to intensify colors in his works by using a heavy glaze coating. By the end of his course at the school, Jorgensen was appointed as an instructor and Assistant Director of the School in 1881. During this time, he fell in love and married Angela Ghirardelli, one of his art students, in 1888. Influenced by his mentors' travels, he decided to visit the Yosemite Valley in 1898. Then in 1900, he submitted an application to the Yosemite Commission for permission to build a studio in the valley itself. Although he was granted a four-year lease, the commission would extend the lease with the intent of not only having a popular artist in their residence, but to take over the use of the structure when the lease expires. Jorgensen would live in the studio during the summers and winters from 1900 to 1917. After leaving Yosemite in 1917, him and his wife settled in Piedmont, California until their deaths. Jorgensen would often prefer to paint in watercolor, which was still viewed as an inferior medium to oil painting at the time, but he was more successful in watercolor rather than oil.