Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was aGerman American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of theAmerican West. He joined several journeys of thewestward expansion to paint the scenes. He was not the first artist to record the sites, but he was the foremost painter of them for the remainder of the 19th century.
Bierstadt was born inPrussia, but his family moved to the United States when he was one year old. He returned to study painting for several years inDüsseldorf. He became part of the second generation of theHudson River School inNew York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along theHudson River. Their style was based on carefully detailed paintings withromantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes calledluminism. Bierstadt was an important interpreter of the western landscape, and he is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School.[1]
Bierstadt was born inSolingen,Rhine Province,Prussia, on January 7, 1830. He was the son of Christina M. (Tillmans) and Henry Bierstadt, a cooper.[2] His older brothers were prominent stereo view photographersEdward Bierstadt andCharles Bierstadt. Albert was just a year old when his family emigrated toNew Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1831. He made clevercrayon sketches in his youth and developed a taste for art.[3]
In 1851, Bierstadt began to paint in oils.[3] He returned toGermany in 1853 and studied painting for several years in Düsseldorf with members of its informal school of painting. After returning to New Bedford in 1857, he taught drawing and painting briefly before devoting himself full-time to painting.[4]
In 1858, Bierstadt exhibited a large painting of a Swiss landscape at theNational Academy of Design, which gained him positive critical reception and honorary membership of the Academy.[4] Bierstadt began painting scenes inNew England and upstateNew York, including in theHudson River Valley. He was part of a group of artists known as theHudson River School.
In 1863, Bierstadt traveled west again, this time with the authorFitz Hugh Ludlow, whose wife he later married. The pair spent seven weeks in theYosemite Valley. Throughout the 1860s, Bierstadt used studies from this trip as the source for large-scale exhibition paintings and he continued to visit the American West throughout his career.[7] The immense canvases he produced after his trips with Lander and Ludlow established him as the preeminent painter of the western American landscape.[8] Bierstadt's technical proficiency, earned through his study of European landscape, was crucial to his success as a painter of the American West and accounted for his popularity in disseminating views of theRocky Mountains to those who had not seen them.[8]
During theAmerican Civil War (1861 to 1865), Bierstadt was drafted in 1863 and paid for a substitute to serve in his place. By 1862, he had completed one Civil War paintingGuerrilla Warfare, Civil War based on his brief experiences with soldiers stationed at Camp Cameron in 1861.[9] That painting was based on astereoscopic photograph taken by his brother Edward Bierstadt, who operated a photography studio at Langley's Tavern in Virginia. The painting received a positive review when it was exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association at theBrooklyn Academy of Music in December 1861. CuratorEleanor Jones Harvey observed that the painting, created from photographs, "is quintessentially that of a voyeur, privy to the stories and unblemished by the violence and brutality of first-hand combat experience."[9]
Financial recognition confirmed his status:The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak, completed in 1863, was purchased for $25,000 in 1865,[10] the equivalent of almost $400,000 in 2020.
In 1867, Bierstadt returned to Europe, arriving inLondon where he exhibited two landscape paintings in a private reception withQueen Victoria.[8] He then travelled through Europe for the next two years, painting new works while also cultivating social and business contacts to sustain the market for his art on the continent.[8] For example, he paintedAmong the Sierra Nevada, California in his Rome studio, displaying it inBerlin and London before having it shipped to the U.S.[11] His exhibition pieces both impressed European audiences and furthered the idea of the American West as a land of promise during a period when European emigration to the U.S. was increasing. Bierstadt's choice of grandiose subjects was matched by his entrepreneurial flair. His exhibitions of individual works were accompanied by promotion, ticket sales, and, in the words of one critic, a "vast machinery of advertisement and puffery."[11]
Bierstadt's popularity in the U.S. remained strong during his European tour. The publicity generated by hisYosemite Valley paintings in 1868 led a number of explorers to request his presence as part of their westward expeditions. TheAtchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad also commissioned him to visit and paint theGrand Canyon and surrounding region.[12]
Rosalie Bierstadt, unknown date
Despite his popular success, Bierstadt was criticized by some contemporaries for theromanticism evident in his choice of subjects and for his use of light, which they found excessive. Some critics objected to Bierstadt's paintings ofNative Americans, believing that including Indigenous Americans "marred" the "impression of solitary grandeur."[7]
His wife, Rosalie, was diagnosed withtuberculosis in 1876, and Bierstadt spent increasing amounts of time with her in the warmer climate ofNassau in theBahamas until her death in 1893. He also maintained travel between the western United States,Canada, and his studio in New York.[8]
Though his painting career continued later into his life, Bierstadt's work fell increasingly out of critical favor and was increasingly attacked for its theatrical tone.[8] In 1882, a fire destroyed Bierstadt's studio atIrvington, New York, and, with it, many of his paintings.[3]
Bierstadt was a prolific artist, having completed over 500 paintings during his lifetime.[13] Yet by the time of his death on February 18, 1902,[14] the taste for epic landscape painting had long since subsided. Bierstadt was buried at theRural Cemetery inNew Bedford, Massachusetts,[2] and remained largely forgotten for nearly 60 years.[8]
Interest in Bierstadt's work was renewed in the 1960s with the exhibition of his small oil studies.[8] Modern opinions of Bierstadt have been divided. Some critics have regarded his work as gaudy, oversized, extravagant champions ofManifest Destiny. Others have noted that his landscapes helped create support for theconservation movement and the establishment ofYellowstone National Park.[7] His work has been placed in a favorable context, as stated in 1987:
The temptation (to criticize him) should be steadfastly resisted. Bierstadt's theatrical art, fervent sociability, international outlook, and unquenchable personal energy reflected the epic expansion in every facet of Western civilization during the second half of the nineteenth century.[15]
On the other hand, his work has also been criticized as largely an imaginary depiction of nature, and even "soulless" in its execution.[16]
Because of Bierstadt's interest in mountain landscapes,Mount Bierstadt andBierstadt Lake inColorado are named in his honor. Bierstadt was probably the first European to visit the summit ofMount Blue Sky in 1863, 1.5 miles from Mount Bierstadt.[32] Bierstadt named it Mount Rosa, a reference to bothMonte Rosa aboveZermatt and, Rosalie Ludlow, his future wife, but the name was changed from Rosalie to Evans in 1895 in honor of Colorado governorJohn Evans, and again in 2023 to Blue Sky.
In 1998, theUnited States Postal Service issued a set of 20 commemorative stamps entitled "Four Centuries of American Art", one of which featured Albert Bierstadt'sThe Last of the Buffalo.[33] In 2008, the USPS issued a commemorative stamp in its "American Treasures" series featuring Bierstadt's 1864 paintingValley of the Yosemite.[34]
The 2018 novel,The Overstory, by Richard Powers features Bierstadt’s painting “Cathedral Forest” as the cover art, further designed by Evan Gaffney. The book won the 2018 AIGA50 Covers award. The author also won the 2019Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the book.
^abHarvey, Eleanor Jones (2012).The Civil War and American Art. Smithsonian American Art Museum; Metropolitan Museum of Art. Yale University Press.ISBN978-0-300-18733-5.
Anderson, Nancy K. et al.Albert Bierstadt, Art & Enterprise, New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1990.
Barringer, Tim and Wilton, Andrew.American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States 1820–1880, Princeton University Press, 2002.ISBN0-691-09670-8.
Miller, Angela. "Albert Bierstadt, Landscape Aesthetics, and the Meanings of the West in the Civil War Era".Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 27, no. 1 (Terrain of Freedom: American Art and the Civil War) (2001): 40–59 and 101–102.doi:10.2307/4102838.JSTOR4102838.
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