Albert Bierstadt: 12 works

'German-American painter Albert Bierstadt was associated with the Hudson River School, a group of naturalist painters known for sublime landscapes bathed in golden light with soft brushstrokes. Bierstadt chose romantic subjects, often scenes from the American West, which included looming storms, monumental canyons and billowing clouds.'

'These views of the west, so often described as distinctly American, were born of Bierstadt's experience abroad and frequency duplicate the composition of the first of his large--scale landscapes, Lake Lucerne.'

'Yet Bierstadt's painting documents the decline and fall of ancient Rome's monuments, while two famous antique statues, the "Sleeping Endymion" and the "Barberini Faun," are reincarnated in a sleeping man and the adjacent street sweeper. The fish-scale and scallop-shell frame motifs offer a playful pun on Bierstadt s subject.'

'Bierstadt began this painting during the course of the year that he first visited the American West, traveling in the company of Frederick W. Lander's official geographic survey expedition.'

'Given the religious subject, Bierstadt's poetic title evokes associations with spiritual enlightenment and darkness.'

'Landscape as a form of theater and spectacle culminated in 19th-century American art with the work of Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt.'

'His views provided eager Eastern audiences with visions of an idealized West, filled with magnificent vistas and inexhaustible resources Americans felt themselves destined to claim and enjoy.'

'Rosalie" (now Mount Evans) was named by the artist in honor of his traveling companion's wife, Rosalie Osborne Ludlow, whom Bierstadt would marry in 1866 following her divorce.'

'City audiences flocked to see paintings like The Emerald Pool, one of his largest canvases, which shows off New Hampshire's Mount Washington. Curtains and elaborate frames added theatrical grandeur to his exhibitions, and visitors brought opera glasses to study minute details.'

'He was born near Düsseldorf in Germany, and brought to America in infancy. He grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, but returned to Düsseldorf as a young art student, and studied painting there and in Rome.'

'Bierstadt's paintings were always carefully detailed records of western scenery, although the artist did not hesitate to alter the features of the landscape to heighten the sense of nature's grandeur or improve his compositions.'

'Constructed in 1874, just one year before Bierstadt finished "California Spring", this landmark building was a notable addition to the landscape.'