Albert Bierstadt

German-American, 1830 - 1902

Death-PlaceNew York, New Yrok

Birth-PlaceSollingen, Rhine, Prussia

BiographyAt the age of two, Albert Bierstadt and his family emigrated from Prussia to the bustling whaling town of New Bedford, Massachusetts. The source of his early artistic training is unknown. By 1850, however, he began advertising as an instructor in "monochromatic painting" and was soon exhibiting his works locally and in Boston. In 1853 he returned to Prussia with the intention of enrolling in the art academy at Düsseldorf. Instead, he fell under the influence of American painters living there, most notably Worthington Whittredge and Emanuel Leutze, who introduced him to the works of the leading German landscapists, such as Andreas Achenbach. Upon his return from Europe in 1857, he settled in New York, where he joined the growing circle of landscape painters.
Bierstadt had acquired a great deal of experience in painting landscape during several summer sketching trips in Europe. In search of American scenery of comparable grandeur, Bierstadt was not contented by the popular and oft-painted mountains of New England. In summer 1859 he accompanied Frederick W. Lander's survey party to the Continental Divide. Four years later he traveled as far as California, where he visited the illustrious Yosemite Valley, discovered by white men only twelve years earlier. One of the first artists to explore the American West, Bierstadt earned his reputation through his grand-scale panoramas of western mountain scenery, such as "The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak" (1863; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and "Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California" (1868; National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.). By the 1860s Bierstadt was being hailed as the preeminent American landscape painter.

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