"[11], Despite his popular success, Bierstadt was criticized by some contemporaries for the romanticism evident in his choices of subject and his use of light was felt to be excessive. The exhibition The Great American Hall of Wonders examines the nineteenth-century American belief that the people of the United States shared a special genius for innovation. Likely the most famous and financially successful late 19th-century painter of the American western landscape, Albert Bierstadt created grandiose, dramatic scenes of the Rocky Mountains and Sierra Nevadas that lured many people to visit those sites. He was part of a group of artists known as the Hudson River School. Albert Bierstadt (1830 - 1902) was a remarkable German-American painter known for his vast and luminous landscapes. The National Gallery of Art serves the nation by welcoming all people to explore and experience art, creativity, and our shared humanity. [4] Bierstadt began painting scenes in New England and upstate New York, including in the Hudson River valley. [14], Bierstadt was a prolific artist, having completed over 500 paintings during his lifetime. Albert Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Germany, in January 1830. All public programs are online only, on-site public tours and events are currently suspended. Though Albert Bierstadt and Richard Diebenkorn created these paintings almost 100 years apart, they create a similar sensation of pilgrimage and uplift. Bierstadt was born in Prussia, but his family moved to the United States when he was one year old. He returned to study painting for several years in Düsseldorf. All albert bierstadt artwork ships within 48 hours and includes a 30-day money-back guarantee. When he was still an infant, his parents immigrated to the United States and the family settled in New Bedford, Mass. Nora Panzer, ed. Media in category "Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains by Albert Bierstadt" The following 10 files are in this category, out of 10 total. They look just awesome and it would be a mistake not having them in your wallpaper collection. Albert was just a year old when his family immigrated to New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1831. His last trip west was in 1889. In 1858, Bierstadt exhibited a large painting of a Swiss landscape at the National Academy of Design, which gained him positive critical reception and honorary membership in the Academy. His family emigrated to the United States when he was two years of age and settled in Bedford, Massachusetts. It was attacked for its theatrical tone. [3], In 1851, Bierstadt began to paint in oils. Bierstadt was an important interpreter of the western landscape, and he is also grouped with the Rocky Mountain School. Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 â February 18, 1902) was an American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. A member of the Hudson River School of paintingâa loosely associated group of romantic American landscape artists, whose sublime luminosity later prompted the term LuminismâGerman-born Albert Bierstadt produced hundreds of large-scale sweeping oil paintings of the American West over the course of his prolific career. "[7], In 1876, his wife was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and from then until her death in 1893, Bierstadt spent time with her in the warmer climate of Nassau in the Bahamas. Rosalie, Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography, "Art, Agency, and Conservation: A Fresh Look at Albert Bierstadt's Vision of the West", "Albert Bierstadt: The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak (07.123) â Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History â The Metropolitan Museum of Art", "Among the Sierra Nevada, California by Albert Bierstadt / Exhibition Label", "Albert Bierstadt: The Wolf River, Kansas (61.28) â The Detroit Institute of Arts", "Echo Lake, Franconia Mountains, New Hampshire / North American / Art of the Americas / Highlights By Category / Collection Highlights / Collections / Smith College Museum of Art â Smith College Museum of Art", "Home / Smith College Museum of Art â Smith College Museum of Art", "St. Johnsbury Athenaeum>>This Week from the Gallery Archives", Bierstadt's Visit to Colorado: Sketching for the famous painting, ", White Mountain paintings by Albert Bierstadt, A finding aid to the Albert Bierstadt letter collection, 1880â1893 in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, "Against His Grain: Albert Bierstadt's 'Clouds Over the Prairie, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albert_Bierstadt&oldid=988725281, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from Appleton's Cyclopedia, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from Collier's Encyclopedia, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles lacking reliable references from May 2018, Wikipedia articles with RKDartists identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SIKART identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SNAC-ID identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with Trove identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. [6][unreliable source? Mount Corcoran, c. 1876â77, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Gosnold at Cuttyhunk (c. 1858), New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford, MA, The Marina Piccola, Capri (1859), Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak (1863), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York, Looking Down Yosemite Valley, California (1865), Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, Lake Tahoe (1868), Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts. De Young Museum, San Francisco, California, Guerilla Warfare, Civil War by Albert Bierstadt, 1862, Century Association, New York, NY, Staubbach Falls, Near Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, 1865, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite Park, c. 1868, Oakland Museum, Oakland, California, Storm in the Mountains, c. 1870, Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA, Mount Adams, Washington, 1875, Princeton University Art Museum. Because of Bierstadt's interest in mountain landscapes. Some critics have regarded his work as gaudy, oversized, extravagant champions of Manifest Destiny. He also continued to travel to the West and Canada. All albert bierstadt paintings ship within 48 hours and include a 30-day money-back guarantee. The National Gallery of Art and Sculpture Garden are temporarily closed.Learn more Paintings show an idealistic view of the American wilderness. Sierra Nevada (c. 1871â1873), Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. On his first trip to the West in 1859 Bierstadt traveled from Saint Joseph, Missouri, to the Wind River Mountains with Colonel Frederick W. Landers’s Honey Road Survey. Keep in touch by subscribing to news and updates from SAAM and Renwick Gallery. Albert Bierstadt wallpapers details This and other popular canvases by the German-born Albert Bierstadt shaped the visual identity of the American West in the United States and abroad. Bierstadt was then largely forgotten. [8] Modern opinions of Bierstadt have been divided. [7] Subsequent reassessment of his work has placed it in a favorable context, as stated in 1987: The temptation (to criticize him) should be steadfastly resisted. The pair spent seven weeks in the Yosemite Valley. Some critics objected to Bierstadt's paintings of Native Americans on the grounds that Indians "marred" the "impression of solitary grandeur. To paint the scenes, Bierstadt joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion. William Truettner, ed The West as America: Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820–1920 (Washington, D.C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991), Albert Bierstadt was one of the first painters to capture the grandeur of the American West. By the time Albert Bierstadt began painting his dramatic landscapes in the middle of the 19th Century, the mountains of New Yorkâs Hudson valley, once the epitome of the American wilderness, had been widely portrayed by two generations of painters, from Thomas Cole and Asher Durand to Frederick Church, John Frederick Kensett and the Luminists. Both painted scenes from the West Coast and worked extensively with light to draw viewers into the painting and move their gaze through it. Bierstadt and his family left Germany when he was two years old. This page was last edited on 14 November 2020, at 22:04. He was only about two years old when his family moved from Germany to New Bedford in Massachusetts. In 1860, he was elected a member of the National Academy of Design; he received medals in Austria, Bavaria, Belgium, and Germany. By 1862, he had completed one Civil War painting Guerrilla Warfare, Civil War based on his brief experiences with soldiers stationed at Camp Cameron in 1861. Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 â February 18, 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He painted Among the Sierra Nevada, California in his Rome studio for example, showed it in Berlin and London before shipping it to the U.S.[11] As a result of the publicity generated by his Yosemite Valley paintings in 1868, Bierstadt's presence was requested by every explorer considering a westward expedition, and he was commissioned by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad to visit the Grand Canyon for further subject matter. In 1860 he exhibited Base of the Rocky Mountains (unlocated) at the National Academy of Design. All albert bierstadt paintings ship within 48 hours and include a 30-day money-back guarantee. Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada, California, 1868. There are multiple famous people known as Albert Bierstadt.Albert Bierstadt was born on January 7, 1830 and died on February 19, 1902. Highly regarded by local patrons and painters, his work commanded top prices. Bierstadt’s “great pictures” show sweeping vistas of Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada, proving that America’s natural wonders rivaled the great ruins of Europe. 19th-century German-American landscape painter, A Storm in the Rocky Mountains, Mt. Choose your favorite albert bierstadt paintings from millions of available designs. In 1863 he traveled to San Francisco and on to Yosemite. After returning to New Bedford in 1857, he taught drawing and painting briefly before devoting himself full-time to painting.[4]. (Anderson and Ferber, Albert Bierstadt: Art and Enterprise, 1990). 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. Giant Redwood Trees of California, 1874, Berkshire Museum, Massachusetts, United States. He was also one of the first artists to use a camera to record landscape views. In 1867, Bierstadt traveled to London, where he exhibited two landscape paintings in a private reception with Queen Victoria. So donât waste any more time and get your 202 great wallpapers of Albert Bierstadt. "Albert Bierstadt, Landscape Aesthetics, and the Meanings of the West in the Civil War Era". 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. [3] He returned to Germany in 1853 and studied painting for several years in Düsseldorf with members of its informal school of painting. 1872â1873 oil on paper mounted on canvas, 21 1/4 x 29 in. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, about Lure of the West: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian American Art Museum (8th and G Streets, NW), about Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture, Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture, Art Bridges + Terra Foundation Initiative, Lure of the West: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture, Using the Nam June Paik Archive - Access and Hours, Highlights from the Nam June Paik Archive, Online Resources for Researching Nam June Paik, Publication Requests for the Nam June Paik Archive. Changing tastes in the 1880s brought a decline in the popularity of his art, and he narrowly avoided bankruptcy in 1895. [8] He traveled through Europe for two years, cultivating social and business contacts to sustain the market for his work overseas. 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. Gift of Mrs. C.N. used by Albert Bierstadt, see: Colour Palette Nineteenth Century. He became part of the second generation of the Hudson River School in New York, an informal group of like-minded painters who started painting along the Hudson River. Find more prominent pieces of landscape at Wikiart.org â best visual art database. Throughout the 1860s, Bierstadt used studies from this trip as the source for large-scale paintings for exhibition and he continued to visit the American West throughout his career. Through the mid-1880s he traveled in the West as well as to Nassau and Europe. In this post, I take a closer look at his life and art. As a young man, Bierstadt traveled to Düsseldorf to study the fundamentals of painting. Shop for albert bierstadt art from the world's greatest living artists. Nancy Anderson and Linda Ferber, Albert Bierstadt: Art & Enterprise (New York: Hudson Hills for the Brooklyn Museum, 1991); Hendricks, Bierstadt. Media in category "Albert Bierstadt" The following 13 files are in this category, out of 13 total. His popularity declined toward the end of his life, however, and despite many attempts to sell his paintings to Congress, he narrowly avoided bankruptcy in 1895. In 1859, Bierstadt traveled westward in the company of Frederick W. Lander, a land surveyor for the U.S. government, to see those western American landscapes for his work. In 1853 he returned to Germany to study in Dusseldorf, where he refined his technical abilities by painting Alpine landscapes. Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery. Others have noted that his landscapes helped create support for the conservation movement and the establishment of Yellowstone National Park. Curator Eleanor 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]. He was buried at the Rural Cemetery in New Bedford, Massachusetts.[2]. Some of Bierstadtâs contemporaries criticized his overly romanticized depictions, stating that his use of light was excessive and unrealistic. As a public health precaution due to COVID-19, all Smithsonian museums are closed temporarily beginning November 23. Bierstadt was part of the second generation of the Hudson River School . He traveled to Wyoming, California, and Oregon, and turned his New York studio into a museum where people could see his paintings amid a vast collection of animal skins and Native American artifacts. With early ambitions to become a painter, he taught drawing in New Bedford, Massachusetts, then in 1853 returned to Germany, where he shared studio space in Dusseldorf with Emanuel Leutze and Worthington Whittredge. By the time of his death on February 18, 1902,[13] the taste for epic landscape painting had long since subsided. 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. Lake Tahoe, by Albert Bierstadt, 1872 (From the collection of Amon Carter Museum of American Art) Not everyone was a fan however. [1], Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Germany, the son of Christina M. (Tillmans) and Henry Bierstadt, a cooper. His family emigrated from Germany in 1832 and settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Some are walking; others are riding horses. Immigrated to the United States as a child. Choose your favorite albert bierstadt designs and purchase them as wall art, home decor, phone cases, tote bags, and more! This exhibition reveals how the influential naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) shaped American perceptions of nature and the way American cultural identity became grounded in our relationship with the environment. The collection was acquired by the Archives of American Art in a series of accessions between 1955 and 2001. [7] The immense canvases he produced after his trips with Lander and Ludlow established him as the preeminent painter of the western American landscape. Lure of the West: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum commemorates Treasures to Go, a series of eight exhibitions from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, touring the nation through 2002. Bierstadt artwork ships within 48 hours and includes a 30-day money-back guarantee >! Based on what media did albert bierstadt use detailed paintings with romantic, almost glowing lighting, sometimes called Luminism ) at the Academy! 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