Albert Bierstadt

Albert Bierstadt

A German-American artist who resided from January 7, 1830, to February 18, 1902, Albert Bierstadt is known primarily for his sumptuous, expansive landscapes of the American West. To paint the scenes, he took part in several Westward Expansion expeditions. While not the first artist to depict the places, he was the most popular artist for the rest of the 19th century.

Bierstadt was born in Prussia, but his family moved to the USA when he was just a year old. He went back and spent a few years in Düsseldorf studying the artwork. He attended the second generation of the Hudson River School in New York, a loose alliance of artists that started producing works near the Hudson River. Their painting practice was focused on subtly contributing immensely to what is sometimes referred to as sensation lighting. Bierstadt, who is often classified with the Rocky Mountain School, was a prominent commentator on the western landscape.

Early life

On January 7, 1830, Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Prussia's Rhine Division. He was the child of cooper Henry Bierstadt and Christina M. (Tillmans).   Edward and Charles Bierstadt, two well-known stereo-view photographers, were his older brothers. When Albert's family migrated to New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1831, he was only a year old. He made creative crayon sketches in his initial periods and established an interest in the arts.

Bierstadt began work with oils in 1851.

  In 1853, he travelled to Europe and spent some time studying paintings in Düsseldorf alongside members of the city's unauthorized school of painting. He momentarily taught drawing and painting after returning to New Bedford in 1857 until he decided to focus solely on painting.

Career

At the National Institute of Design in 1858, Bierstadt showed a sizable artwork of a Swiss landscape, which earned him praise from peers and honorary participation in the Academy. Bierstadt created vistas in upstate New York and New England, starting with the Hudson River Valley. He contributed to the infamous Hudson River School of painters.

To see such western American landscapes for his art, Bierstadt traveled west in 1859 with Frederick W. Lander, a land assessor for the U.S. government. He went with sketches for various artworks that he later finalized to a studio he had rented at the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York. He was selected to join the National Academy of Design in 1860 and was awarded medals in Austria, Belgium, Bavaria, and Germany.

Bierstadt moved to the West in 1863, this time with the author Fitz Hugh Ludlow, whose wife he would eventually wed. The two stayed in Yosemite Valley for seven weeks. During his work, Bierstadt continued to go to the American West and used studies from this trip as the foundation for major works intended for presentation throughout the 1860s. He became known as the greatest western American landscape artist because of the enormous canvases he created following his expeditions with Lander and Ludlow. As a painting of the American West, Bierstadt's technical ability, gained through his studies of the European landscape, was important to his success. It also explained his fame in presenting vistas of the Rocky Mountains to people who had never seen them.

Bierstadt was drafted in 1863 and arranged for a successor to serve in his place during the American Civil War (1861–1865). Based on his short interactions with troops deployed at Camp Cameron in 1861, Guerrilla Warfare, Civil War was the only Civil War picture he had finished by 1862. A binocular photograph taken by his brother Edward Bierstadt, who conducted a photography business out of Langley's Tavern in Virginia, acted as the subject for that work. When the artwork was presented at the Brooklyn Art Association at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December 1861, it garnered good reviews. The artwork, which was drawn from images, "is that of a voyeur, privy to the narratives and unspoiled by the carnage and cruelty of first-hand battle experience," said curator Eleanor Jones Harvey.

The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, created in 1863, was bought for $25,000 in 1865, equal to about $400,000 in 2020, establishing his prominence.

Bierstadt made his return to Europe in 1867, settling in London where he presented two landscape paintings at a royal ceremony.

  After that, he spent the following two years going throughout Europe, painting new items while developing business and social connections to maintain the demand for his art there.

He painted Among the Sierra Nevada, California in his studio in Rome, showed it in Berlin, and then had it transferred to the United States. During European immigration to the US was rising, his exhibition pieces both wowed European viewers and pushed the concept of the American West as a country of hope. Bierstadt's flare for economics matched his penchant for big topics. Promotion, ticket revenue, and, in the words of one reviewer, a "huge machinery of publicity and puffery," preceded his exhibits of single artworks.

While his European tour, Bierstadt's popularity in the United States stayed high. Many explorers asked him to join their western excursions due to the attention his Yosemite Valley drawings garnered in 1868. The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad also gave him a license to travel to and paint the Grand Canyon and its surroundings.

Despite his mass popularity, Bierstadt received criticism from several of his predecessors for idealizing his themes and using excessive illumination. Because they felt that including Native Americans "marred" the "image of lonely greatness," some reviewers strongly disagreed with Bierstadt's paintings of Native Americans.

When his wife Rosalie was issued a TB diagnosis in 1876, Bierstadt started spending more time with her in the Bahamas' Nassau, where the environment was warmer, until she died in 1893. He proceeded to go back and forth from his studio in New York to the western United States and Canada.

Even though Bierstadt remained to paint throughout his life, his work lost popularity with critics and came under increased criticism for its too-spectacular tone. In 1882, a fire in Irvington, New York, destroyed Bierstadt's workshop, taking many of his paintings with it.

The prolific Bierstadt finished over 500 pictures while his career. However, the craze for big landscape paintings had long ago dissipated when he passed away on February 18, 1902. After being placed to rest in New Bedford, Massachusetts' Rural Cemetery, Bierstadt was essentially forgotten for almost 60 years.

Late HSonours

With the presentation of his miniature oil studies in the 1960s, interest in Bierstadt's work was revived. There are different versions now concerning Bierstadt. His work has been called tacky, enormous, and flamboyant supporters of Manifest Destiny by certain reviewers. Others have highlighted that his landscapes played a role in organizing public sentiment in favour of the conservation movement and the formation of Yellowstone National Park. According to a 1987 statement, his work has been set in a favourable context:

To criticize him would be seductive, but one should fiercely refuse. The epic development of western civilization throughout the second half of the 19th century was expressed in Bierstadt's dramatic talent, ardent sociability, global view, and inexhaustible personal drive.

On the other hand, his work has also come under fire for being completely fictional and even "soulless" in its creation.

Works by Albert Bierstadt

  • Majesty of the Mountains, 1853
  • The Old Mill, 1855
  • The Portico of Octavia, 1855
  • Westphalia 1855
  • Lake Lucerne, c. 1853, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 1858
  • The Wolf River, Kansas, c. 1859, oil on canvas, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan 1859 
  • Echo Lake, Franconia Mountains, NH, Smith College Museum of Art, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts 1861 
  • The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York  1863 
  • Cho-looked, the Yosemite Fall, oil on canvas, Timken Museum of Art, San Diego, California 1864 
  • Valley of the Yosemite, oil on paper, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts 1864 
  • Looking Down Yosemite Valley,[citation needed] Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama 1865
  • Yosemite Valley, Oil on canvas on panel-back stretcher, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio 1866 
  • On the Hudson River Near Irvington, 1866–70, oil on paper, Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts 1866 
  • A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Rosalie, oil on canvas, Brooklyn Museum, New York City, New York 1866 
  • Connecticut River Valley, Claremont, New Hampshire, 1868, oil on canvas, Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts 1868 
  • In the Sierras, Fog Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1868 
  • Among the Sierra Nevada, California, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.  1868 
  • Glen Ellis Falls, oil on canvas, Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, New Jersey 1869 
  • Sierra Nevada Morning, oil on canvas, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma 1870 
  • Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast, oil on canvas, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington 1870 
  • Domes of Yosemite, c. 1871, St. Johnsbury Athenaeum, St. Johnsbury, Vermont 1871 
  • Giant Redwood Trees of California, c. 1874, oil on canvas, Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Massachusetts 1874 
  • Mount Adams, Washington, 1875, oil on canvas, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, New Jersey 1875 
  • Mount Corcoran, c. 1876–77, oil on canvas, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 1876 
  • The Last of the Buffalo, oil on canvas, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. 1888 
  • Alaskan Coast Range, c. 1889, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.  1889 
  • The Last of the Buffalo, c. 1891, vintage photogravure, Valley Fine Art Gallery, Aspen, Colorado 1891 
  • The Morteratsch Glacier Upper Engadine Valley – Pontresina 1895 
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Sierra Nevada I

Sierra Nevada I

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Among the Sierra Nevada California Painting
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Sierra Nevada
50cm X 40cm [ 20" x 16"]60cm X 50cm [ 24" x 20"]90cm X 60cm [ 36" x 24" ]100cm X 75cm [ 40" x 30]120cm X 90cm [48" x 36"]140cm X 100cm [56" x 40"]150cm X 100cm [60" x 40"]160cm X 120cm [64" x 48"]180cm X 120cm [70" x 48"]200cm X 135cm [79" x 54"]165cm x 205cm [65” x 81”]183cm x 228cm [72” x 90”]203cm x 254cm [80" x 100"]

Sierra Nevada

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Puget Sound On The Pacific Coast
Valley of the Yosemite 1864

Valley of the Yosemite 1864

$82.00 – $3,991.00
Kern's River Valley, California

Kern's River Valley, California

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A Rustic Mill

A Rustic Mill

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California Spring

California Spring

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The Last of the Buffalo II

The Last of the Buffalo II

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On The Saco

On The Saco

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Giant Redwood Trees of California