It is no coincidence that Charles Sheeler’s most famous portrait was taken by Ansel Adams. The two artists maintained a long-time friendship, despite living on opposite sides of the country. During the 1950s, Sheeler renewed his friendship with Ansel Adams with a visit to San Francisco in 1956. Unlike Adams, for whom the mountains of Sierra Nevada and other majestic landscapes took on the role of muse, Sheeler rarely ventured out into rugged nature. Thus, Sheeler’s search for imagery at Yosemite, a trip from which Sun, Rocks, and Trees resulted, is a rare example of shared inspiration for Adams and Sheeler. Yet, despite the common locale, Sheeler “deliberately avoided both the dramatic views of heroic mountains and the close-up examination of nature’s floor that were Adams’s stock-in-trade…. The details of the landscape and the sense of penetrable space are quickly obscured by Sheeler’s resolute abstracting of all forms and by his avoidance of a single dramatic focus.”