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Albert Bierstadt (1830 - 1902)

Albert Bierstadt was one the most internationally honored American artists of the nineteenth century. He became famous for his monumental and dramatic landscapes of the American West. He is identified with romantic scenes that include towering mountains (Sierra Nevada), dramatic skies (The Buffalo Trail), cascading waterfalls (Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite), and meticulous renderings of detail (Moose).

Born in 1830 in Solingen, Germany, he emigrated with his family at the age of two to the United States, where they settled in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Not much is known about his early life or art training, but by 1850, he had started exhibiting his paintings in New Bedford and Boston.

Bierstadt returned to Germany in 1853 to study at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and to travel extensively throughout Europe. Here became a technically proficient master and developed a love for Old World Europe, both of which are evident in his work. When he returned to America, he applied his prodigious energy and ambition to organizing a large and successful exhibition that included many of his paintings.

A turning point in his career came in 1859, when he traveled to Colorado and Wyoming with a US government survey expedition to procure sketches for a series of large-scale landscape paintings of the American West. The resulting paintings secured his fame and he became the foremost rival of Frederic Church in the field of monumental New World landscapes.

Bierstadt is also closely linked with the famous Hudson River School, a group of artists working at the time who sought to express the beauty and magnificence of landscape.

He became highly successful and wealthy, able to command the highest prices ever paid for paintings at the time. He balanced his wealth with selfless participation in numerous charitable organizations.

His reputation declined after 1880 as tastes in art began to change with the rise of Impressionism, but Bierstadt has since regained his reputation for the awesome grandeur and epic portrayals of the American frontier.

His works can be found in major public and private collections throughout North America and Europe, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Canada.

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