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Artist Index
Paintings Albert Bierstadt Paintings
Lake Tahoe
Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California
A golden summer day near Oakland
A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie
Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite Valley, California
Estes Park, Colorado, Whyte's Lake
Giant Redwood Trees of California
Hunter in the White Mountains Near Glen House (detail)
Island Lake, Wind River Range, Wyoming
Lake Tahoe in winter, the Sierra Nevada, California
Looking from the Shade on Clay Hil
Mariposa Indian Encampment, Yosemite Valley, California
On the Hudson River Near Irvington
Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast
Sioux Village near Fort Laramie
Sketch for „The Last of the Buffalo“
Summer Snow on the Peaks or Snow Capped Mountains
Surveyor's Wagon in the Rockies
The Grizzly Giant Sequoia, Mariposa Grove, California
The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak
View of Chimney Rock, Ohalilah Sioux Village in the foreground
View of Glacier Park or Sunset on Peak
The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak
Albert Bierstadt (January 8, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his lush, sweeping landscapes of the American West. In obtaining the subject matter for these works, Bierstadt joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion. Though not the first artist to record these sites, Bierstadt was the foremost painter of these scenes for the remainder of the 19th century. Albert Bierstadt's Looking Down Yosemite Valley (1865), Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama Sierra Nevada (c. 1871–1873), Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina Storm in the Rocky Mountains (Mount Rosa), 1886, Brooklyn Museum, New York Bierstadt was part of the Hudson River School, not an institution but rather an informal group of like-minded painters. The Hudson River School style involved carefully detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called luminism. An important interpreter of the western landscape, Bierstadt, along with Thomas Moran, is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School.[1] Biography Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Germany. His family moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1833. He early developed a taste for art and made clever crayon sketches in his youth. In 1851, he began to paint in oils.[2] He studied painting with the members of the Düsseldorf School in Düsseldorf, Germany from 1853 to 1857. He taught drawing and painting briefly before devoting himself to painting. Bierstadt began making paintings in New England and upstate New York. In 1859, he traveled westward in the company of Frederick W. Lander, a land surveyor for the U.S. government, returning with sketches that would result in numerous finished paintings. In 1863 he returned west again, in the company of the author Fitz Hugh Ludlow, whose wife he would later marry. He continued to visit the American West throughout his career. Though his paintings sold for princely sums, Bierstadt was not held in particularly high esteem by critics of his day. His use of uncommonly large canvases was thought to be an egotistical indulgence, as his paintings would invariably dwarf those of his contemporaries when they were displayed together. The romanticism evident in his choices of subject[3] and in his use of light was felt to be excessive by contemporary critics. His paintings emphasized atmospheric elements like fog, clouds and mist to accentuate and complement the feel of his work. Bierstadt sometimes changed details of the landscape to inspire awe. The colors he used are also not always true. He painted what he believed was the way things should be: water is ultramarine, vegetation is lush and green, etc. Nonetheless, in 1860 he was elected a member of the National Academy; he received medals in Austria, Bavaria, Belgium, and Germany;[4] and his paintings remain popular. He was a prolific artist, having completed over 500 [5] (possibly as many as 4000) paintings during his lifetime, most of which have survived. Many are scattered through museums around the United States. Prints are available commercially for many. Original paintings themselves do occasionally come up for sale, at ever increasing prices. In 1882 his studio at Irvington, New York, was destroyed by fire, with many of his pictures.[2] Existing work * The Emerald Pool, New Hampshire, ca. 1870 at the Chrysler Museum of Art Legacy * Because of Bierstadt's interest in mountain landscapes, Mount Bierstadt in Colorado is named in his honor. Bierstadt was probably the first European to visit the summit of Mount Evans in 1863, 1.5 miles from Mount Bierstadt.[6] Bierstadt named it Mount Rosa, a reference to both Monte Rosa above Zermatt and, Rosalie Ludlow, his future wife, but the name was changed from Rosalie to Evans in 1895 in honor of Colorado governor John Evans. * In 1998, the United States Postal Service issued a set of 20 commemorative stamps entitled "Four Centuries of American Art", one of which featured Albert Bierstadt's The Last of the Buffalo.[7] In 2008, the USPS issued a commemorative stamp in its "American Treasures" series featuring Bierstadt's 1864 painting "Valley of the Yosemite." [8] Footnotes 1. ^ Picturing America's Natural Cathedrals Selected paintings Gosnold at Cuttyhunk, (c. 1858), New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, MA The Marina Piccdola, Capri, (1859), Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York The Rocky Mountains: Lander's Peak, (1863), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, (1868), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. Lake Tahoe, (1868), Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts San Francisco Bay, (1871-1873), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC. See also * List of works by Albert Bierstadt References * Anderson, Nancy K. et al. Albert Bierstadt, Art & Enterprise, Hudson Hills Press, Inc.: New York, New York, 1990.
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