The relationship of photography and painting has greatly intrigued art historians in recent years, as has the uneasy status of photography as “art” and/or “documentation.” An in-depth study of 19th-century landscape images suggests two new premises on the subject: first, that opinions differed on photography's status as an art in the 19th Century, just as they differ today; and, second, that the landscape photograph is more closely related to the plein air oil sketch than to the finished studio easel painting. For ease of comparison, the visual material used here will consist primarily of landscapes made in and around Yosemite Valley, California, in the 1860s and 1870s; comparisons will be made among paintings by Albert Bierstadt, photographs by Carleton Watkins and Eadweard Muybridge, and works in both media by less famous artists.