Head for West with Albert Bierstadt
Monday, February 11th, 2008Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902) was born in Solingen, Germany; grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts; went back to Germany for four years to study painting; and returned to the United States to paint. Bierstadt is famous with spectacular mountain scenery. He often went to treacherous and dangerous locations to made sketches and took photos of the scene. From these photos, he painted his awe-inspiring landscapes. Bierstadt once headed west with an expeditionary party in 1859 and, in the summer of 1861, took sketches of Eastern Shoshone country in the Wind River region of Wyoming.
In The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peak Bierstadt focuses on the natural sunlight on the scenes. Although Native Americans and animals populate the foreground and middle ground of the painting, they do not dominate on the painting - they’re simply local color and ambience. It’s the light in the painting that has personality. Bierstadt was in favor of the long, wide shot rather than intimate close-up.