AbstractCoherent anti‐Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) from the C=C stretching band region of retinal, recorded with low‐power, 7‐ps (fwhm) laser excitation selected to be in electronic resonance with the retinal chromophore, is presented for light‐ and dark‐adapted bacteriorhodopsin (BR) samples. By minimizing photochemistry with low‐power excitation, the picosecond resonance CARS (PR/CARS) spectrum of BR‐570 (13‐trans, 15‐anti‐retinal) is obtained directly from the light‐adapted BR sample. The PR/CARS spectrum of BR‐548 (13‐cis, 15‐syn retinal) is derived from a quantitative analysis of PR/CARS data from dark‐adapted BR which contains comparable amounts of BR‐570 and BR‐548. Band origin positions, lineshapes, relative intensities, and phase factors describing the electronic resonances are obtained from a quantitative fit of the PR/CARS spectra to third‐order susceptibility (χ(3)) relationships. These PR/CARS data, the first reported for a molecular system as large as BR, demonstrate the experimental viability of CARS for recording the vibrational spectrum of a chromophore within a trans‐membrane protein. In addition, the χ(3) analysis shows that a CARS spectrum of a mixture of isomeric chromophores can be quantitatively separated into CARS data assignable to its individual components. The significance of these results with respect to analyzing picosecond time‐resolved CARS data from intermediates in the BR photocycle is discussed.